What, no bin? Mexico City leads the way with its zero waste restaurant

Hunched over the pass in the open restaurant kitchen, chefs are dusting ceviche with a powder made from lime skins that would, in most cases, have been thrown away.

- Imogen Lepere

The kitchen of the Mexico City restaurant where they work looks like most others, but it lacks one key element: there is no bin.

Baldío was co-founded by brothers Lucio and Pablo Usobiaga and the chef Douglas McMaster, best known for his groundbreaking zero-waste spot Silo London.

The food, which recently earned a green Michelin star, is creative but still quintessentially Mexican, with dishes such as squash tostada with guaca-broccoli, maguey flower, maguey worm and chinampa flower, and grassfed pork from Veracruz with tamarind mole.

The founders work with Arca Tierra, a regenerative agriculture project that includes a network of 50 farmers in central Mexico as well as their own farm in Xochimilco, an ancient neighbourhood in the south of Mexico City.

"We want Baldío to be a model that shows it is possible to be both zero waste and to rely on farmers rather than supermarkets," says Lucio Usobiaga.