Mexico City is proving that high-end cuisine can exist without producing waste. Baldío, co-founded by restaurateurs Lucio and Pablo Usobiaga alongside Doug McMaster—renowned for creating the world’s first zero-waste restaurant in London—operates without a single bin in its kitchen. This radical step is not a marketing gimmick but a blueprint for how food, farming, and hospitality can coexist within a truly circular and regenerative system.
McMaster, who views waste bins as “coffins for badly designed systems,” has long championed the idea that restaurants should function more like nature—where nothing is lost, and everything is reused. At Baldío, this philosophy is applied with discipline and creativity. Ingredients like lime peels, which would typically be discarded, are instead transformed into flavour-enhancing powders. Fish trimmings and vegetable skins are fermented, creating sauces and broths that not only minimise waste but also deepen the flavour profile of dishes.
Baldío’s menu stays true to its Mexican roots while pushing culinary boundaries. Diners are served squash tostadas with a guaca-broccoli blend, maguey flowers, and fermented local kimchi, or Veracruz-sourced grass-fed pork paired with tamarind mole and chinampa-grown greens. The dishes are striking not just in taste and presentation but in their environmental credentials—earning the restaurant a Michelin Green Star for sustainability.But the kitchen is only part of the story. Most of the restaurant’s ingredients come from Arca Tierra, a regenerative agriculture project co-founded by the same team. Arca Tierra works with a network of 50 farmers in central Mexico and manages 18 chinampas—ancient, floating gardens in Xochimilco, a UNESCO-recognised ecological zone in southern Mexico City. These farms use centuries-old pre-Aztec agricultural methods, including growing on nutrient-rich islands formed from mud and plants, to produce vegetables in harmony with the local ecosystem.
At the heart of Baldío’s model is a feedback loop between chefs and farmers. Every week, the restaurant’s culinary team visits Xochimilco to plan menus based on what’s ready to harvest. Their produce is then paddled across the canals and delivered just eight kilometres to La Baldega, a nearby fermentation lab and prep space where many ingredients are processed, preserved, and transformed into new culinary components. This hyperlocal model drastically reduces the need for refrigeration and long-haul transportation—cutting the restaurant’s carbon footprint significantly.
La Baldega also hosts the restaurant’s fermentation programme, which turns waste into value-added products like tepache (a pineapple rind beverage), pulque (a traditional agave drink), and koji-based sauces inspired by ancient East Asian traditions. These efforts extend the life of ingredients, prevent spoilage, and replace factory-made condiments with nutrient-rich, house-made alternatives.What Baldío is doing goes far beyond recycling or composting. It’s a bold demonstration of how the hospitality industry can embrace a regenerative ethos—where supply chains are local, waste is nonexistent, and traditional knowledge merges with innovation. Restaurants like Baldío, and others inspired by it in Lisbon, Helsinki, and the Netherlands, are shifting the sustainability conversation from greenwashing to real, systemic change.
For chinampa farmer Noy Coquis Saldedo, now in his seventies, the collaboration with Baldío represents both continuity and revival. With only 2.5% of chinampas still actively farmed, the project offers hope that traditional agriculture can not only survive but thrive. “Now we are delivering food to the great city like my ancestors did,” he says.
As pelicans glide through the ancient canals and chefs bring in each week’s harvest by boat, Baldío serves as a living, breathing model for what the future of dining could look like. Rooted in heritage but driven by innovation, the restaurant is proving that zero-waste is not just possible—it’s delicious.
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