Raymond Blanc ou Raymond Vert

Monday evening was spent in a crammed bar in Soho for what at first glance at some of the 80's hairstyles, seemed to be a Duran Duran video audition, but was in fact the launch party for the Sustainable Restaurant Association (SRA).

The SRA is a much needed initiative. A recent report calculated that taking into account land use, food contributes an enormous 30 per cent of the UK's carbon emissions. The UK throws away a staggering 1.2 million unused sausages everyday and anyone who has seen the film End of the Line knows we are decimating our fish stocks.

Restaurants are a fantastic place to change our unsustainable relationship with food and to start educating and changing the eating habits of people.

I hope that the SRA can play a key role in the process, but it faces many challenges. It is clear that the organisation has to create a financially viable structure and at the same time build credibility for its accreditation service.

The SRA's response to this challenge has been to provide a low entry threshold acknowledging that people are "at the table". Raymond Blanc's Manoir aux Quat Saisons is one of those restaurants that have paid to register at this level.

How those restaurants that have already done a considerable amount to act sustainably are going to view this low entry point and whether they will wish to be accredited by the SRA remains to be seen and this will be key to the long-term reputation and future of the organisation.

Eau de Cologne policies

On Tuesday evening I went to a "volunteer hustings" where the three main political parties presented their policies to promote volunteering. This is a real motherhood and apple pie topic, easy for politicians to wax lyrical about the importance of volunteering in providing social glue, community cohesion, blah, blah, blah....

Despite the best efforts of the Chairman, Michael White, the Assistant Editor of the Guardian, the debate inevitably fell into this realm of cosiness. The Liberals' approach could best be described as an eau de cologne policy sprayed around to give a sense of general well-being, but when examined closely it was a bit damp, wet and hard to define.

The Conservatives' Nick Hurd had a much clearer set of policy objectives which were hard to disagree with, and Labour's approach was basically trust us we have treated the sector well and will continue to do so.

The only time the debate had any edge was a discussion over the youth volunteering organisation V. I am totally biased on this matter because we receive funding from V and Bank of America to run our Climate Squad programme, which we think is fantastic. Organisations such as V run counter to the Conservatives' mantra about the need to reduce large centrally-based organisations and Nick Hurd alluded to this in his presentation.

However, V has professionalised the interface between volunteering and companies and has been highly successful in securing large sums of corporate funding for volunteering initiatives. Without V, this level of non-governmental funding would not be generated and for this reason alone I think there is a need for a cohesive central body like V whichever political party wins power.

Dodgy wedding boat

The volunteer hustings event discussed the need to encourage companies to devote more employee time to volunteering. One barrier to this is that charities currently do not provide sufficiently high quality volunteering opportunities to meet company requirements.

I was reminded of this on Thursday, most of which was spent on board a moored boat in the River Thames for the final Sky Leadership Development event.