IN 2012, I partnered with a brilliant team

to realise a vision: to create a sustainable

restaurant that served food made from

scratch with produce sourced from ethical

growers, all while generating no waste.

This would entail a radical change to

almost everything in a cafe, from the build

to the operation. On the team was hospitality supremo Danny

Colls, who already had a wealth of experience creating

Melbourne cafe institutions. Over years of friendship we’d built

a mutual respect. What’s more, he understood how wasteful the

industry was and wanted to prove that there’s another way.

Leading the charge in the kitchen was passionate young

chef Douglas McMaster. He embraced my radical ideas and

collaborated with Matt Stone, then head chef of Greenhouse,

my sustainable serial pop-up restaurant. Backed by an equally

passionate team, we got started.

Silo wouldn’t have existed without collaboration and it sure

wouldn’t have succeeded. My most prized memories are the

many relationships forged with the suppliers who assisted in

realising this dream.

But first, why a zero-waste restaurant? Well, the answer lies

in numbers that are hard to comprehend. Australians produce

70 million tonnes of waste each year. When this is itemised it’s

even more staggering – for instance, we go through around

eight million milk bottles a day, leaving a mountain of unwanted

and hard-to-recycle plastic. We have designed waste into our

lives, and we can design it out.

In Brooklyn two years ago we did a Silo zero-waste pop-up.

I heard someone say that “zero waste is a trend that will pass”.

That’s a ‘trend’ that started long before we were here. The

natural world doesn’t generate waste; we do.

I believe the survival of humans as a species relies on the world

moving towards a closed-loop, zero-waste economy. Currently,

our food becomes less nourishing as our soils are mined, while

there are reports of an unprecedented drop in fertility across the

Western world along with escalating spending on healthcare.

Designerandeco-warriorJoostBakkeropened

theworld’sfirstzero-wasterestaurant,Silo,in

Melbourne.LatercalledBrothl,it wasforcedto

closefollowinga stoushwiththecouncil.Here

hetalksabouttheroadtowaste-freesuccess.

PHOTOGRAPHYEARLCARTER

ZERO WA STE

H

@joostbakker

JOOST BAKKER.