This Year's Sustainable Bar Award at The World's 50 Best Bars Goes To...

As Sustainability Audit partner for The World’s 50 Best Bars (as well as the rest of the 50 Best awards portfolio), we’re happy to share that The Cambridge Public House has won the Sustainable Bar Award 2025, announced last night in Hong Kong!

Located in the Marais district of Paris, the team behind The Cambridge Public House aims to combine the quality service and refined mixology of a high-end cocktail bar with the relaxed, friendly surrounds of a comfortable, welcoming neighbourhood pub. 

Behind this distinctive vibe lies a strong commitment to doing business in a conscientious way — with a focus on seasonality and responsible sourcing, considerable investment in staff development and community engagement, and practical action taken to meet environmental targets. Together, these efforts reveal a business embedding sustainability into everyday practices and making positive contributions to the wider world. Let’s take a deeper look at why they deserved to win this award. 

Sustainable sourcing at The Cambridge Public House 

The sourcing strategy at The Cambridge Public House has clearly been developed with sustainability in mind. Their menus show great respect for seasonality; to date, they’ve designed 71 cocktails using 85% seasonal ingredients. Employing a dedicated buyer has strengthened their capacity to assess the practices of their suppliers, enabling them to prioritise products with a low environmental and social impact.  

Both alcoholic and non-alcoholic ingredients are purchased directly from producers, and the team buys in bulk where possible to better support livelihoods and reduce transport emissions. Beyond procurement, The Cambridge Public House actively supports producers by giving them visibility at festivals and events. 

Social sustainability at The Cambridge Public House 

The Cambridge Public House is conscious and deliberate about how it interacts with its team, industry and community. 

Each employee has four development meetings per year, where managers not only review performance and goals but also discuss personal growth, wellbeing and wider societal engagement. The pub supports the wider hospitality sector through its Shaken Leaf website — a free, open-source collection of industry advice, recipes and interviews designed to help other businesses on their own sustainability journeys, driving positive change even further. Recognising the need to address mental health challenges across the sector, they have also created and distributed addiction awareness materials to bars across Paris.  

They support a healthy drinking culture through a growing non-alcoholic offering (which increased by 25% this year), supported by visible placement of non-alcoholic bottles and a rotating ‘Cocktail of the Week’ spotlight. The social impact of The Cambridge Public House extends into the community through a 1% initiative, which donates 1% of annual income to local charities. In the meantime, they also encourage their staff to engage directly through activities like charity running clubs, school runs and Christmas events for children with chronic illnesses.  

How The Cambridge Public House serves the environment 

Setting ambitious yet achievable goals is a key part of any environmental initiative, and The Cambridge Public House is working to clear targets set for 2025 to reduce energy use, carbon emissions per guest and overall waste generation. Waste management is a central focus: they achieved 35% composting in 2024 (including 95% of food waste, totalling nearly 2,000kg) and aim to increase this to 40% in 2025. 

The team leverages creativity as an important means of minimising the bar’s impact, with ingredients fully utilised across multiple processes and waste streams from other businesses — such as avocado stones, vanilla pods and coffee — often integrated into cocktail design. Further reductions have been achieved through compostable sous vide bags, eco-friendly packaging and an electronic ticket dispenser that works to eliminate the use of paper outside of their menus. Together, these initiatives have helped reduce the economic carbon intensity of operations by 22% and the carbon impact of cocktails by 21%.  

Lead image from The Cambridge Public House Instagram page. 

You can find more information about The Cambridge Public House on their website, and learn more about our work with 50 Best here.   

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