Paramount Events is committed to a sustainable future and improving the well-being of our team, guests, clients, and community. We look to lead our industry in the pillar of environmental sustainability through our local farm partnerships, food waste diversion initiatives, serving and packaging options, culinary techniques, operational advancements, and the continual expansion of our on-site greenhouse. We are a company rooted in purpose and recognize the opportunity to create and educate around what sustainability means and why it’s important. We also have the responsibility to be a resource to our partnerships as they play an integral role in our efforts to be successful. Our success includes working towards circular solutions for the health of the planet, providing high-quality culinary experiences to stimulate the souls of our guests today and to continually improve outcomes for generations to come.
purpose
Passion about sustainability and being mindful about our impact on our communities drove our decision to offer both composting and food surplus donation services into our standard catered event operations. These services help divert food waste, but with our food donation program, it gives us an opportunity to address another issue – food insecurity.
Compostable materials make up more than half of the trash that goes to landfills. This includes food, paper, yard waste, and wood. To help do our part in reducing what we send to landfills, our culinary team collects scraps left over from food preparation and works with clients to integrate composting services at their locations. At events, we are collecting food scraps and items no longer fit for consumption and storing them in bins to be collected by our composting partner, WasteNot Compost. An added bonus is getting compost back to be used as fertilizer in our greenhouse!
Paramount Events, utilizes a technology-based service, Copia, to handle the pick-up of prepared food that is left over after an event. The surplus food that Copia collects is sent to local non-profit beneficiaries. This service has been a common inquiry in the past, but there are liability issues when donating food that has been prepared. To manage this issue, Copia carries liability insurance and requires their extensive network of non-profit organizations to sign a hold harmless agreement, which absolves businesses from legal responsibility if anything unfortunate happens. To date, there have been zero lawsuits for any donations in the U.S.