The Kinda Food Where Greens Are Always Tastier

I’m no culinary wizard.  Scratch that, I’m a dud in the kitchen.  So my gastronomic deficiencies have allowed me to adopt a keen relish for dining out.  From the first bite of buttered bread to the last sip of a warm cappuccino, I swoon over menu selections, service and good company from across the table.

But on my way home, belly full and food coma a comin’, I think back to the restaurant I just left.  The gray sweet-smelling smoke heaves from the ovens while the air-conditioning coaxes a chill over my body.  The glass bottles strewn in garbage bins.  The polished, heavy silverware I grip in my fingers.  The paper napkin folded across my lap and the slick Styrofoam container I leave with.  It now seemed more like a crime scene.

Michael Oshman, Executive Director and Founder of the Green Restaurant Association (GRA), would agree.  In 1990 he set out to encourage the $558 billion restaurant industry, occupying 10% of the U.S. economy and crowned the number one consumer of electricity in the retail sector, to swing sustainable. 

Green Should be a Restaurant’s Golden Rule

There are approximately 945,000 restaurants across the U.S.  Each one typically produces an average of 100,000 pounds of trash, uses 500,000 kilowatt hours of electricity and 800,000 gallons of water in only one year.  All this contributes to the estimated 490 tons of carbon dioxide one restaurant produces annually—that’s 463,050,000 tons produced by restaurants across the country per year.  Oy.

But with help from organizations like the GRA, restaurants can make the gutsy decision to become Green Certified.  Oshman and his team have proven that sustainability and financial gain often walk arm-in-arm, a win-win for restaurant owners.  Making food handling, storage and cooking more efficient, switching out incandescent light bulbs for compact fluorescent ones, using non toxic chemical cleaners and incorporating energy efficient spray valves in one establishment could lead to big savings.  On top of these alterations, the GRA’s influence helps to assist manufacturers and distributors to lower product costs.  A Green Certified establishment could save thousands of dollars in one year.

Other than persuading cash savings, sustainability has become all the rage.  Green is splashed over advertising campaigns, bumper stickers, t-shirts.  Even oil companies are putting their stake in green.  And it’s oozing into the restaurant industry, too.  A survey done by the National Restaurant Association (NRA) claims ‘environmentally friendly equipment that saves water and/or energy’ is one of the hottest new trends in restaurant kitchens; over 60 percent of restaurants installed energy-saving equipment in the last two years.  The organization has also started a new green initiative to give the industry a nudge.  Green sweet-talks customers to visit sustainable restaurants and woos them back with their positive effect on the community.

So if getting behind green results in saving massive amounts of water and electricity, upping profits and being a bit more popular in the public eye, why is it so hard to convert the business?  Is there a psychological obstruction that makes people resist change?  Or is it just pure laziness?

Eating Green isn’t just in your Veggies

The Boston-based Green Restaurant Association aims to answer the restaurant sustainability riddle by targeting the industry and the consumer.  Attacking the issue from both sides means creating more responsible restaurants and ensuring the customer appreciates the issues.  They’ve gone even further to make the Green Certification process simple and convenient to contend with the often sluggish reaction people have to change.

Working with 225 restaurants across 35 states in the U.S. and Canada, the GRA has helped a host of eateries commit to sustainability.  To become a Green Certified Restaurant they had to replace all Styrofoam products, recycle every item accepted by local waste collection companies, follow the GRA environmental guidelines and execute one environmental step after signing their contract.  Then, to continue membership, they have to complete four new steps each year.

Each restaurant is assigned an environmental consultant to gather information and identify areas of improvement.  Each year they provide a list of six to eight suggested steps and the owner elects four to complete.  As the basic environmental steps are realized, the changes get more and more sophisticated and their cost-effective choices start paying off.

“Nobody gets a free ride,” says Oshman.  Whether it is a sprouts-veggies-hummus hipster joint or a meat ‘n potatoes beer-guzzling haunt, every café, bistro and sandwich shop can make better choices for the environment.

Environmentally Fair Fare

“Initially we wondered:  are we doing this right?  Because we didn’t get a reaction…but eventually it came,” says Bob Carroll owner of The Bayside Restaurant in Westport, Massachusetts.  Tagged “the best dinky little restaurant in the Commonwealth for over thirty years”, The Bayside was voted the first Green Restaurant in the state by the GRA in 2003.

Along with his wife, Nancy, the Carrolls opened The Bayside in 1974 in a remote village called Horseneck Beach.  The small yellow building is nestled across the road from the ocean with views of Cape Cod across the bay.  With a breezy outdoor patio and a cozy indoor dining room, the restaurant gives off an informal, friendly vibe.  There are only a few restaurants nearby, so while many of the guests are repeat customers, the weekend brings hoards of outsiders discovering the beauty of small Westport.

During Bayside’s infant years, Bob knew there was a problem when he filled up his truck with recyclables and noticed the garbage wasn’t separated at the landfill—he had to do it himself.  After discussing the matter at town meetings, recycling programs were finally offered; this event inspired the Carrolls to make further revisions.

“I believe in fresh, real, honest, authentic food,” says Nancy who considers locally grown and organic products the best-tasting and reminiscent of the foods she ate growing up on a farm.  The vegetables, berries, sodas, beer, wine, fish, and quahogs—their specialty—are either grown by the farmer down the street, distilled in the brewery minutes away or plucked from the Westport River.  They also use free-range chicken and grass-fed cattle.

In essence, the Carrolls have been operating in the green since before anyone had a definition for it.  After reading about the GRA in a trade magazine, they decided to obtain Green Certification which invited many changes around The Bayside.  They use non-toxic chemical cleaners, recycled chlorine free paper napkins and compact fluorescent light bulbs.  In the kitchen, they installed Energystar appliances to increase efficiency.  You’ll find corn-based cutlery on the tables and outside, the Carrolls operate their own well.  They collect used frying oil which at least five local farmers convert to biodiesel for their trucks.  This year they’ll work to start composting, and Bob and Nancy dream of receiving enough funding for a wind turbine, a major feat.

“We have to be responsible for what we put in our mouths,” Nancy says.  The Carrolls try to educate their customers who have gradually become more conscious of the environmental strides they’ve taken.  “We think about it constantly,” Bob tells me, and he encourages his guests to think about it, too.  They not only provide an admirable example for their gaggle of kids and grandkids, but also for the restaurant industry.

Get Your Daily Helping of Green

Sure, the food was tasty and the service snappy, but my morality refuses to be sated.  As I leave dinner, I think my stomach and my ethics would now be contented if I visited a green restaurant instead.  Luckily most states offer green cuisine options serving up palatable platefuls that fill up stomach and soul.  So next time I’ll make the wise decision to dine sustainable and support the restaurants that have made the bold choice to give us a better choice when it comes to food.