The Michelin stars of ecology

Andreas Johansson from Restaurang Gotland receives the certificate from KRAV's CEO Lars Nellme.

It’s becoming more common for people to take ecological sustainability into account when shopping food at the supermarket, but it’s often a different thing when we eat at a restaurant. For obvious reasons it’s a bit trickier to find out how the delicacies on the menue have been produced.

To change this, the Swedish eco-label association KRAV started certifying restaurants already back in 1997. One problem with this, though, has been that you couldn’t tell the differece between a restaurant that only had a few organic dishes from one which put their whole soul in going organic: They all had the same label. Therefore KRAV has now started a new system, where restaurants get more labels the more organic products they use. One label means that 25 percent of the products are organic. 50 percent organic products give two labels and 90 percent gives three.

The certification isn’t limited to private restaurants, about 125 public restaurants (for example in schools or retirement homes) have been labelled according to the old rules.

Last week I went to see the first restaurant, the recently opened Restaurang Gotland in Stockholm, receive its plaque with one KRAV label. As the name suggests, the owners of this restaurant are very inspired by the island of Gotland, not far from Stockholm, and the enthusiastic organic farmers they have met there.

Others thinking of getting the certification is Rosendal’s Garden Café , also here in Stockholm. They would be eligible for the full jackpot of KRAV labels,

The KRAV label.

since about 90 percent of their products are organic. The KRAV label doesn’t take into account where the products have been made, but in Rosendal’s case many of them are even produced in their own gardens, so that must definitely count as locally produced.

Speaking to Kristin Cooper who works for KRAV, she told me with a big smile that their hopes for the labels is that they will become the organic equivalent to Guide Michelin’s desirable stars.
Not a bad goal!

Sara Jeswani - Sustainability

January 24, 2011

• food
• organic
• restaurants
• Stockholm
• sustainability
• Sweden