The Food Co-op switches to induction to reduce their emissions and save money

Canberra’s Food Co-op is a community-run organisation that has a passion for providing low waste, affordable, and sustainable food, and products to the community.

There are two main offerings of the business, the majority bulk grocery store, where shoppers can buy as little or as much as they need, using their own or re-use packaging and the café.

The Food Co-op received a grant from the ACT Government’s Community Zero Emissions Grants Program to transition the café’s kitchen from gas cooktops to induction.

Challenge

Operations Manager Naomi Lacy explains the Food Coop puts environment, sustainability and people as the organisations’ central focus and using gas cooktops was no longer a good alignment for their business.

“We are continuously looking for ways to reduce our footprint and waste and we wanted to ensure we are doing our best to be a net-zero emissions organisation.”

“We also wanted to improve the health and safety of the kitchen for our chefs and volunteers so switching from gas cooking to induction was a no brainer.”

Action

The ACT’s electricity comes 100% from renewable sources. The Co-op decided that they didn’t want to contribute to greenhouse emissions by burning gas for cooking when a cleaner option is available.

“By switching, we’ve made our business more environmentally sustainable, but we have also noticed many other advantages to using induction.”

Benefit

“Zero gas bills! Plus, the induction is so efficient we haven’t really noticed an increase to electricity bills, so the cost savings have been significant.”

“It’s more time efficient than gas too.”

“I tested this at home with my neighbour as we both did kitchen renovations around the same time, I put in induction, and they did gas. We did a timed boiling water test and induction wins.”

“Cleaning up is easier than gas too, so there is added time savings with that.”

Volunteer Natalie also shared some of the benefits her and some of the other volunteers have noticed in the kitchen.

“100% safer, we use big pots, when we lift those off or are working round the stove tops there is no naked flames, and the air is cleaner and safer for us too”.

“It’s also cooler in the kitchen now, it used to get almost unbearable in here at times with the flames, its much, much cooler so that has been a great bonus.”

Fossil fuel gas contributes over 20% of the ACT’s emissions, with households making up most of the gas connections in the ACT.

“We are teaching households about low waste cooking; and we’re promoting that we’ve gone off gas.. We hope we can encourage them to switch over their cooktops too.

“My advice to other businesses and households would be to go for it!”