At The Lodge at Ashford Castle, a 19th-century villa in the wild green of western Ireland’s County Mayo, dinner scraps don’t go in the bin. They go into cocktails, canapés or compost.

Over the past year, the hotel has slashed its food waste by nearly 60 per cent by weight and its food trimmings by 90 per cent. That amounts to 11.5 tonnes of food waste, nearly 50 tonnes of carbon and more than €16,000 saved annually. Much of it is thanks to a chef who was empowered to swap sustainability gestures for serious change.

“Instead of hundreds of tiny little initiatives, we decided to go after the stuff that would actually make a difference,” says executive chef Jonathan Keane, a sustainability advocate who leads the kitchen at the 64-room sister hotel to the magnificent, medieval Ashford Castle.

Those initiatives have been quite an undertaking. On any given day, Keane and his colleagues can serve 500-plus meals and go through piles of produce.

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