Chaneton sources ingredients locally wherever possible. Due to the specific ingredients required for the cuisine he cooks, he also has to source from trusted partners in Latin America and across Asia – but he tries to lessen his environmental impact as much as possible.

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“For me, cooking sustainably starts with knowing where your produce comes from and working with products that are ethically sourced,” he said. For Chaneton, this means ensuring his partners share his values: “That’s the basic standard I set for our cuisine at Mono.”

The restaurant has partnered with Zero Foodprint Asia to provide grants that support farmers for healthy soil projects, and with Future Green, a food sustainability programme that provides sustainability assessments for the food and beverage sector.

The award-winning bar is launching a new menu starring 10 cocktails all made with a zero-waste approach. “We use every cocktail ingredient to its full potential to reduce waste and close that loop,” explained co-founder Agung Prabowo. “Squeezing juice from a citrus fruit is a popular way to add acidity to a serving, but peel the rind and you can use it to make zesty syrups, garnishes, Oleo Saccharum or home-made limoncello and add it back into other cocktail ingredients.”

Further proof that Hong Kong’s fine dining restaurants have been making real strides has come from Michelin inspectors. Amber and Roganic are trailblazing icons of sustainability in the city – both have received Michelin Green Stars, awarded for maintaining ethical and environmental standards.

Ekkebus has set up a three-pillared approach to sustainability: society, sourcing and environment. Under the pillar of society, the focus is on the well-being of staff at Amber and the hotel, and giving back to society, for example through supporting charities. He’s expanding the restaurant’s ethical sourcing by, for example, only obtaining sugar through Fairtrade, Rainforest Alliance and Bonsucro, and continuing to ensure all animal proteins are free roaming or organic and free of growth hormones and antibiotics.

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Under the pillar of environment, Ekkebus is adamant about minimising waste and is now looking to find circular solutions for polystyrene: “One of the limitations here is facilitating waste segregation and circular waste solutions. There are a limited number of suppliers focusing on ecolabel and organic products, but it’s still a niche demand at the moment. The positive side is that interest is growing.”

Roganic chef Ashley Salmon shares Ekkebus’s frustrations with waste. “Recycling and composting can be difficult as there are only a few providers,” he explained.

Those 3,000 tonnes of food waste that go to landfill every day decompose, giving off methane, which is 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide. The team at Roganic is now exploring different ways to do their own composting, reduce waste and trying to work with more new farmers in the New Territories.

The restaurant grows herbs in hydroponic cabinets inside the dining room and has a zero waste philosophy, transforming offcuts into new dishes and drinks. It reduces plastics by requiring suppliers to adhere to eco-friendly practices and, like Mono and Amber, has a filtration system to avoid using bottled water.

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While she uses non-genetically modified soybeans from Canada, many of the other ingredients she sources locally or regionally. Fruits and vegetables come from local organic farms, of which there are more than 300 in Hong Kong. For chicken, she works closely with local farms to ensure the meat is of the highest quality, while seafood is from a mix of local and regional sources.

“We use threadfin and salted fish from around Asia, as well as seasonal cuttlefish. We also use a wide variety of spices and condiments, such as bean paste, to add flavour and depth to our dishes,” Lau said.

Lau believes that the underappreciated ingredient of soy has the potential to encourage people to eat less meat. The production of meat has an outsize negative impact on the environment – a major study published in 2021 in online journal Nature Food found that meat accounts for nearly 60 per cent of all the greenhouse gases produced during food production.

This was a fact Ekkebus was well aware of when he introduced a sharp reduction in animal products to Amber back in 2019. The restaurant has since been entirely dairy-free and works to a ratio of 35/65 per cent of animal protein to plant-based ingredients in the menus.

It’s one thing for individual restaurants to try and go green, it’s another to shift a massive global organisation towards greater sustainable practices. Marriott International, with over 8,000 properties worldwide, is leading the charge among global players in the city.

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“Sustainability is a top priority for the company,” according to Richard Taffs, Marriott’s market vice-president for luxury, Greater China. “The larger the company, the more difficult it is. But our drive for sustainability comes from the very top.”

Taffs explains that through programmes such as Serve 360 and Mesh (Marriott Environmental Sustainability Hub), sustainability is at the forefront of the company’s operations. “It’s the first question we ask of any menu we’re putting together or of any project. ‘What are our sustainable options?’,” he explained, before documenting how responsible sourcing, using cage-free eggs, certified seafood and improving food waste management are just some of the policies Marriott have introduced to improve their environmental impact.

Marriott’s Greater China team also runs a sustainability committee that meets monthly and organises conference calls on new topics or programmes, which run out of the Hong Kong office. “Sustainability is challenging,” admitted Taffs. “In Hong Kong, we have to import nearly everything. So we are doing a fantastic job on food miles? No. But in regards to food waste, we are. In other areas like soap recycling we lead the way in Hong Kong. So there are pluses and minuses in each location. And it’s the right thing to do. As a company, it would be high risk if we weren’t morally responsible.”

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While moves toward greater sustainability should always be applauded, and some of Hong Kong’s finest restaurants these are leading the way, there is still a long way to go.

For Ekkebus, including the younger generations is key to speeding up the process of change and building a more sustainable future. “Many more restaurants and hotels are taking the lead to employ various sustainable practices. However, Hong Kong is aiming to be carbon neutral before 2050 and the clock is ticking,” he said.

“Unfortunately, the changes are coming slow. We need education on sustainability to be a mandatory part of the school curriculum. We have to plant the seed with the young generation, and they will drive the change and educate the parents.”