Announcing Our Free Biodiversity Toolkit For The Hospitality Sector!

London, 2nd September 2025: The Hospitality Sector Council in partnership with the Sustainable Restaurant Association (The SRA) has today launched a new Biodiversity Toolkit for hospitality businesses, sponsored by Liberty Insurance and Coca-Cola Europacific Partners.

Taking inspiration from the Sourcing pillar of The SRA’s comprehensive Food Made Good Framework, the new Toolkit offers ways for hospitality businesses to support and protect biodiversity across all facets of their operations, from kitchen kit-outs to menu design.

By making this resource openly accessible and free to download, The SRA and the Hospitality Sector Council hope to inspire and support the UK’s hospitality sector in making choices that safeguard our natural biodiversity.

DOWNLOAD THE TOOLKIT

What to expect from the Toolkit

The Biodiversity Toolkit covers three key focus areas, or tiers, in which hospitality businesses can manage their impact on biodiversity.

• The Built Environment and Operations explores how businesses can enhance biodiversity through things like energy use, water stewardship and property management.
• Menus and Sourcing focuses on creating biodiversity-friendly menus by diversifying ingredients, sourcing sustainably and reducing reliance on products linked to deforestation.
• The Value Chain and Collaboration highlights opportunities to work with suppliers, support regenerative farming and participate in collective biodiversity initiatives.

Within each of these tiers, the Toolkit explains how hospitality businesses of all shapes and sizes affect biodiversity and outlines key actions — big and small — that they can take to reduce their impact. Whether it’s a café planting pollinator-friendly flowers, a restaurant sourcing regeneratively farmed produce or a hotel investing in rewilding projects, this structure provides actionable steps to protect biodiversity while also enhancing brand reputation and building long-term resilience.

The Toolkit also provides an overview of relevant legislation in the UK, helping businesses to understand what is currently expected of them and what may be coming down the line, helping to safeguard businesses against potential legislative changes in the future.

Importantly, the Toolkit also includes case studies from a variety of businesses in the UK, highlighting impactful ways in which real businesses are already taking action on biodiversity. These stories capture a wide range of creative approaches: supporting regenerative farming practices through procurement policies; taking a ‘less, but better’ approach to putting meat on the menu; switching to electrified kitchen equipment; introducing integrated grazing into rewilded land; and even turning an unused grass verge into a tiny, nature-friendly space that now welcomes over 20 species (and saves money, too!).

Tim Doubleday, Chair of the Hospitality Sector Council’s Sustainability Committee and CFO of Burger King UK, said, “The Sustainability Committee is focused on three key workstreams of Zero Carbon, Biodiversity and Nutrition, aimed at supporting hospitality businesses to grow in a responsible way. These workstreams will be driven by legislation and are complex and not mutually exclusive, so our focus is to help businesses across hospitality with practical examples they can bring to life in their own businesses. I am grateful to The SRA for their support in pulling this guide together and we look forward to building on it.”

Managing Director of The Sustainable Restaurant Association Juliane Caillouette Noble said, “At The SRA, we believe that the hospitality industry can truly change the world; our role is to support the sector in creating this change. We’ve designed this toolkit to be a practical ‘how-to’ guide, highlighting steps (big and small) that restaurants can take to protect the natural world. The biodiversity crisis demands urgent attention and swift action from all industries, but ours in particular holds real power to make a difference in our supply chains and in how customers think about their food choices. If hospitality businesses across the globe were to view protecting biodiversity as a priority, the scale of change we could create would be incredible.”

Why is biodiversity a concern?

The number of species on our planet is declining faster than at any other point in human history. If we don’t change how we interact with the natural world, nearly 40% of all species will face extinction by the end of the century. Most of this is driven by our global food system.

Once a species disappears, it’s gone for good — and the impact is not limited to that one species. Every natural ecosystem exists in a delicate balance, and losing any species has a knock-on effect, devastating other plant and animal life and posing a lasting threat to our food supply.

What does this mean for restaurants?

With the climate and biodiversity crises at critical points, today’s food choices will make all the difference to tomorrow’s food landscape. Furthermore, with growing awareness around the biodiversity crisis, regulatory requirements are tightening, while customers, staff and investors are increasingly concerned about environmental impact.

Restaurants in particular have the power to contribute to a better food future for all of us. By actively championing biodiversity, chefs can build interest in more diverse ingredients — driving change upstream in what food is grown, raised and caught, and downstream to influence how people eat in restaurants and, ultimately, when they’re at home. This can help to strengthen our food systems, support farmers and producers and improve public health.

The Biodiversity Toolkit is free to download and is available now here:

DOWNLOAD YOUR COPY

About The Hospitality Sector Council (HSC)

The Hospitality Sector Council (HSC) exists to ensure that the UK’s hospitality industry continues to flourish into the future. The Hospitality Sector Council came into existence to support, guide and drive an agenda for the first national strategy for hospitality, which encompasses both post-COVID recovery and building the future resilience of the sector. Its formal remit is as a forum to facilitate cooperation between hospitality and Government, co-creating solutions for hospitality and supporting the delivery of the Hospitality Strategy.

About The Sustainable Restaurant Association (The SRA)

The Sustainable Restaurant Association (The SRA) is on a mission to drive positive change through the hospitality industry, building a sector that is both environmentally restorative and socially just. Join us on our mission by signing up to the Food Made Good Standard, the only sustainability certification designed for hospitality businesses! We also offer a wide range of consultancy work on sustainability issues, including biodiversity, and can provide expert training for your team. Get in touch with any questions at hello@thesra.org.

Biodiversity facts and figures

• The number of species on our planet is declining faster than at any other point in human history. If we don’t change how we interact with the natural world, nearly 40% of all species will face extinction by the end of the century. [Source]
• Most of this is driven by our global food system; agriculture alone is the identified threat to 86% of the 28,000 species at risk of extinction. [Source]
• Globally, biodiversity intactness — the proportion of the original number of species in an area that remain and their abundance — stands at 75%, significantly below the 90% average defined as the 'safe limit' to maintain the ecological processes that are vital to our survival. [Source]
• The UK has just 53% of its natural biodiversity left, placing it in the bottom 10% of countries worldwide. [Source]

For more information or interview opportunities, please contact The SRA at press@thesra.org.