Is your business doing the rifle or the shotgun?

In the last month I joined the throwaway society (for a brief moment) and bought a new phone for my business. I needed to, as my old one now longer did what I needed it to do and so I prowled through the phone shops until I found the one that would work for me.

I now have an old phone that is perfectly fine for others to use with a good battery and all the bits, so what do I do with it? There are a lot of bits in mobile phones that can be reused and / or recycled, so I am not going to just throw it away.

What I was particularly impressed with in my new purchase, is that the manufacturer of my new phone packaged it minimally (with no plastic bags at all) and in a cardboard box that had been made from 100% post-consumer recycled materials. Inside was a post bag for me to send my old phone to a mobile phone recycler, at no cost to me.

This large business can quite rightly say that it is trying to be sustainable, even to the point of encouraging it’s customers to recycle their old phones. It makes it look good and will make people more likely to purchase from it again in the future as it is seen as trying to do the right thing.

So why am I talking about a new phone and what that manufacturer did to be sustainable on this food safety related website?

It is this, food safety is vital and without it in control, we will not have a business. It is really that simple, but food safety cannot be seen in isolation. It is only a part (all be it vital) of what a food business must do, and being sustainable, and being seen to be, is now the new reality of business.

Having a system for how things are done in a business with plans, schedules, procedures, training, monitoring and records will ensure that all these essential things and tasks like food safety and sustainability get done when and how they need to be.

I am doing work for a solicitor at the moment helping them prepare a case to defend a client against some breaches to the Food Standards Code. If that business had not just had checks done and recorded, but a food safety program in place, then they may have not been facing what they now are.

Good food safety is not a shotgun approach with a bit here and a bit there, but it should be done by thinking like a rifle. There should be a clear target and a plan for how to get there, including written methods, training, monitoring and consistent good records.

The company that manufactured my new mobile phone is obviously one that takes the rifle approach, does your food business?

Written by Rachelle Williams, The Green Food Safety Coach.