You may be hearing a lot of buzz about your favorite restaurants going ‘green’ by having more locally-sourced, sustainable food. But how green are the rest of their practices? Did they choose sustainable furnishings, are their refrigerators energy efficient, do they compost? A non-profit called the Green Restaurant Association can help address all these issues, and is pushing the food service industry to truly go green.

One of the first things you can do to be a more environmentally-conscientious consumer, is to look up Certified Green Restaurants™ in your area. Check out the Green Restaurant Association’s searchable database and see which of your favorite restaurants, coffee shops, and bakeries have already made the commitment, and which are still lagging behind.

For those restaurants that haven’t taken the plunge to become Certified, why not send them a little note of encouragement to go green? The GRA has printable suggestion cards on their website which you can slip in with the check or a sample email which you could modify and send to the manager of your favorite restaurant.

So what does it mean to be a Certified Green Restaurant™? You can think of it as somewhat similar to the process of earning LEED certification for green buildings. There are three types of Certifications – Existing Restaurants, New Builds, and Events. For each category, there are different point thresholds that must be met at a minimum to garner Certification. The businesses are given merits based on seven categories: water efficiency, waste reduction & recycling, sustainable furnishings & building materials, sustainable food, energy, disposables, and chemical & pollution reduction.

All Certified Green Restaurants™ must have full-scale recycling programs, be completely free of Styrofoam, and maintain an annual education program. In addition, they can gain certain numbers of points for practices under the categories listed above. For example, installing low flow faucet aerators in the kitchen sinks, dual flush toilets in the restrooms and reusing greywater for irrigation will all earn points in the water efficiency category.

A large goal of the GRA is to promote zero waste in the food service industry. As they point out, the average restaurant can produce 150,000 pounds of garbage per year. That includes organic waste, as well as recyclables. They suggest ways to divert waste from composting to making biodiesel from grease to finding vendors that will take back their own packaging to reuse.

The Green Restaurant Association also understands that restaurants may not have the time to sort out all of these green practices, even if they wish they did. So the GRA has implemented assessment and consulting programs to make it even easier and to see how sustainable practices can benefit the bottom line. Staff of the GRA will complete an environmental assessment to see where a restaurant is in relation to the Certification Standards, and consultants can suggest specific steps and solutions to gain more points. Consultants can help set up recycling programs, recommend green products, find distributors and even perform cost analyses.

For businesses in the food service industry, the GRA is a great resource to help find credible ways to be more environmentally responsible and the benefits are obvious. Not only are you making a difference for our planet, but improving the bottom line and creating a healthy and enjoyable environment for staff and customers.

Consumers are beginning to make smarter choices about dining out and research shows that people really do care what impact their favorite restaurants are having on the environment. So whether you’re thinking of opening your own restaurant, or just enjoy dining out, make sure that you choose the most environmentally responsible route and always dine green.

This post was first published on The Green Bean Blog. To continue reading, please visit Green Restaurants: Choosing Environmentally Responsible Restaurants is a post from:

Whether a part of your morning routine, or an afternoon snack, many of us enjoy a yogurt from time to time. But when you’re finished what do you do with the empty plastic container? I always waiver between the commingling recycling bin or the trash. I never truly knew whether my community would and could recycle #5 plastic (polypropylene), which is what those yogurt containers and other plastics like containers for hummus or cottage cheese are made of. We’ve known for awhile that plastic bottles for drinks are recyclable, but usually curb-side recycling will not take #5 plastics. So what to do with them?

Preserve, a company that designs and manufactures 100% recycled goods has partnered with Organic Valley and Stonyfield to start a program called “Gimme 5“. You can drop off your #5 containers at many Whole Foods locations – look for bins usually near the entrance or exit – or if you don’t have access to Whole Foods, simply ship the plastics to Preserve. Preserve then recycles these plastics into household goods from toothbrushes to razors to food storage containers. Many of these products come in bright colors, and are sleek and as user-friendly as anything else on the market (if not better!).

If the idea of bringing your plastic containers back to a Whole Foods seems like more effort than you’re willing to make, consider the environmental savings that result from recycling polypropylene instead of manufacturing it. Preserve plastics require at least 75% less oil, 54% less water, 48% less coal and 46% less electricity than virgin polypropylene. These figures were derived using average data for the U.S. using the Life Cycle Assessment, which compares the environmental impact of the entire process from beginning to end. As we use up the global supply of finite natural resources, we need to find ways to wean ourselves off of coal and oil. Preserve is making this shift, and enabling us to divert more and more waste out of our landfills and back into our homes as new products.

This post was first published on The Green Bean Blog. To continue reading, please visit Recycle #5 with Gimme 5 is a post from: