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I mentioned cardboard. Cyrus had thoughts…

Natalie Stanton

Sponsor EHO Insider

EHO Story 📩

A little while ago, I shared a common EHO bugbear:

Cardboard on the floor of walk-in chillers and freezers.

EHOs really don’t like seeing it.

It gets wet, tears, traps dirt, hides spillages and impacts cleaning.

Basically, it starts life as packaging and somehow ends up being promoted to flooring.

After I shared the tip, my friend Cyrus Todiwala OBE, chef and owner of Café Spice Namaste, messaged me.

And it turns out chefs have their own list of reasons to dislike cardboard in cold rooms too.

Cyrus pointed out that cardboard can deteriorate quickly, become damp, develop mould and leave a musty smell behind.

Then there’s what happens when that damp cardboard starts losing its strength.

A weakened box can collapse under the weight of its contents.

If those contents happen to be bottles, you can suddenly go from “slightly soggy cardboard” to broken glass, tiny fragments in hard-to-see places, leaking drinks and sticky floors.

Quite the upgrade.

He also mentioned coated meat boxes.

These are different because they’re designed for chilled environments. But once they’ve been emptied, they still need to be disposed of properly.

If used boxes are left dripping with blood or liquid around the waste area, you’ve now got another cleaning and housekeeping issue, and potentially something that could attract pests (not to mention a cross-contamination risk!).

Food Safety Tip ✅

My original point was very much an EHO one:

Don’t use cardboard to line your chiller or freezer floor.

But Cyrus’s message was a good reminder that food safety issues rarely exist in isolation.

What looks like “just a bit of cardboard” can become a cleaning issue, a housekeeping issue, a slip risk, a glass contamination problem or something that makes pest control harder.

And this is exactly why I want to help you think like an EHO.

Sometimes it’s about looking past the obvious thing and asking:

What else could this lead to?

And in this case, apparently the answer is quite a lot. 😅

This week’s action 🔍

Have a look around your cold room and check:

  • Is cardboard being used to line floors or shelves?
  • Are damp or damaged boxes being removed promptly?
  • Are spillages cleaned up straight away?
  • Are empty meat boxes being disposed of properly?
  • Can you easily clean and inspect the floor and shelving?