These Tiki Trash Cocktails Are Made From Garbage And Offer Zero-waste

Sustainability isn’t the sexiest topic in the bar and restaurant industry, but it’s a necessary conversation we have to have if we plan on making any dents in our big, fat food waste problem. It wasn’t always an issue for bars, especially those who made the majority of their money slinging draught beers and shots.

But when the craft cocktail movement rolled in, so did more and more perishable ingredients that simply end up in the garbage if they don’t make it into a drink in time. To help combat this issue, two award-winning, London-based bartenders launched Trash Tiki, an anti-waste cocktail initiative that tackles the topic of sustainability in a fun, irreverent way.

Instead of tossing out three to four barrels of lemon and lime peels per night (per bar!), every piece of the fruit from seed to skin is being used in new, inventive (and delicious) drinks.

Following the nose-to-tail movement among chefs, anti-waste bartending, or “trash cocktails,” use “root-to-fruit”. Trash Tiki sources ingredients people tend to throw away because they think it doesn’t have flavour.

The company has utilized the tops and tails of tomatoes to do a clarified Bloody Mary, watermelon rinds to make an oleo saccharum (used in punch), and end-of-the-day croissants and avocado pits for orgeat. Yes, avocado pits are edible and have been used in Mexican medicine for hundreds of years.

When Trash Tiki sets up one of its pop-up bars, Ramage and Griffith take inventory of the hosting bar or restaurant’s trash bin. At one pop-up, they created a coconut syrup from spent coconut fibers. During the Hong Kong pop-up, the entire city’s bartenders were on a What’s App thread and, with a simple text, Trash Tiki had bartenders and chefs around the metropolis dropping off throw-aways from their kitchens.

Trash Tiki launched in 2016 as a simple recipe platform, but Ramage and Griffith took the show on the road in 2017 for a 10-month trip to educate bartenders about anti-waste, particularly how to tell someone they’re drinking from the trash.

Creating a new punk rock “language” of talking about cocktail sustainability has brought a spotlight to the trash cocktail movement. And everyone wants to go dumpster diving.