sweetgreen Tours the Stony Field Yogurt Plant

October 27, 2009

This past Friday the sweetgreen team had the opportunity to tour the facilities of Stonyfield Yogurt in Londonderry, New Hampshire. The guys got fitted out in all the gear and were very impressed with the operation. In fact, it is Stonyfield Yogurt that is a big part of the Sweetflow recipe. The founder of Stonyfield, Gary Hirshberg, serves as a big inspiration for all of us here and we would like to thank him for letting us visit. If you get a chance check out Gary’s book, Stirring It Up: How to Make Money and Save the World, which explains the company’s sustainability focused philosophy that led to Stonyfield’s success. Here is what went down:

Beginning the Tour

Getting Outfitted Out

With Gary Hirshberg @ Whole Foods

The Stonyfield Process

epa & green energy

September 21, 2008

did you know

sweetgreen is an EPA Green Power Partner? this is part of the EPA’s efforts to have green energy be more broadly used in the US; Green Power Partners are simply organizations and businesses that buy this type of energy. being a GPP puts us in the excellent company of Fortune 500s like Apple and Whole Foods, government agencies like the IRS and universities like Harvard.

For a full list of the EPA’s Green Power Partners, check here. The EPA’s website also provides a useful clarification of what green energy actually is:

Green power is a subset of renewable energy (Graph 1) and represents those renewable energy resources and technologies that provide the highest environmental benefit. EPA defines green power as electricity produced from solar, wind, geothermal, biogas, biomass, and low-impact small hydroelectric sources. Customers often buy green power for avoided environmental impacts and its greenhouse gas reduction benefits.

renewable energy relies on sources that can renew themselves in a short period of time and do not diminish, but they may have a small impact on the environment. examples are energy from the sun, wind or moving water.

conventional energy comes from the combustion of fossil fuels and we all know what effects that has on the environment.

anthropogenic emissions refers to the carbon dioxide produced by human activities while biogenic emissions result from natural biological processes/when stuff rots.

Tokyo Police Club – Juno (Ra Ra Riot/Andrew Maury Remix)

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The Kaiser Chiefs – Never Miss A Beat (Cut Copy Remix)

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Justice – Planisphere Pt. 4

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smartcars

September 6, 2008

not just for europeans anymore!

mayor fenty has one

(see this WP article slideshow for a better picture)

and, as seen in september vogue, the social set are also into them

noted benefits of smart car:

• “cute and new factor,” “new and bright and shiny”
• interchangeable panels to match your new pink blackberry/macbook air in “prowler” metallic purple/Nina Ricci chunky knits
• potential to launch entirely new fashion trends and create an odd subset of Americans who own both a wrangler/H2/escalade/etc AND a Smart ForTwo
• can be parked sideways
• oh and 33/41mpg!

The Virgins – Rich Girls

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all kidding aside, it really is good that we are leaving the bigger-is-better mentality behind, accepting reality and making changes. four years ago some thought it was unlikely. no one is asking families to squeeze into 8.8 foot long cars for cross-country road trips, but if you can save the SUV for those purposes and use a Smart for your solo commute to work, why not? and since small cars are always cuter anyway, why not up the appeal by turning them into accessories? maybe numbers are boring but try not to forget that they are part of the reason to pick the car – it gets really good gas mileage.

on the other hand, although the Smart may be the “new green statement” and the Prius/other hybrids “old hat,” the Smart is not a hybrid, just a very efficient gas-powered car. and, the Washington Post article mentions, you only save a few hundred dollars per year over a “larger” car like the Fit or Yaris.

Miss TK & The Revenge – No Biterz (Son of Vader RMX)

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white collar, blue collar, new color green collar

September 5, 2008

green collar:

“A green-collar job is in essence a blue-collar job that has been upgraded to address the environmental challenges of our country.”
-Lucy Blake, CEO of Apollo Alliance

“A green job has to do something useful for people, and it has to be helpful to, or at least not damaging to, the environment.”
-Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club

what are the perks of green collar jobs?

proponents say that green jobs are good because:

• growing this industry will create jobs that cannot be easily outsourced
• construction workers currently unemployed due to the housing collapse may easily transition into being green collar, for example building and maintaining wind turbines
• green collar jobs are not static in the way that blue collar factory jobs are – in fact they could be upwardly mobile, providing a path out of poverty (see NYT article)
• nor is “green collar” limited to manual labor – these jobs may require highly specialized technical and scientific knowledge, for example Ph.D. employees at Plextronics, which manufactures polymer inks used in solar panels, making it a diverse industry in terms of job opportunities

green collars in the news

• One of Barack Obama’s major policy proposals is sinking $150bn into creating 5 million new green collar jobs, aiming to bolster the economy while finding for new and better sources of renewable energy. This was also a major part of Senator Clinton’s platform; she emphasized the fact that green collar jobs do not lend themselves to being outsourced or exported and afford a relatively high degree of upward mobility.

• The Green Builder’s Association in DC and the Green-Collar Jobs Advisory Council of DC have recently partnered to create a job training curriculum for workers in the local construction industry. Participants will be trained to recognize the relationship between the life cycles of buildings and the environment, finding greener construction alternatives and identifying their pros and cons as well as understanding how a building may become LEED rated; completion of the curriculum will earn them credentials recognized in the construction industry that can give them an advantage in the job market. Nicely fulfills Pope’s criteria in that it not only promotes green building practices but directly benefits its human participants as well by expanding their skill set and improving their job prospects.

Metronomy – Heartbreaker (Kris Menace Remix)

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Earlier in the summer we had a post about how due to the energy crisis and rising fuel prices, biodegradable plastics suddenly became cheaper to produce and the companies that make them experienced enormous growth. In other words, in the area of bioplastics at least, the energy crisis forced us to expand into a greener alternative (which we knew we should have been doing all along) and it is turning out not to be as painful as we thought it would be.

Maybe this is a similar situation – we are quickly catching on to the fact that we’ve been lazy in coming up with alternative energy sources and that all our procrastination has set us back. There could be a silver lining. Now that we are finally getting around to it, it may end up helping one of the sectors of our economy that is hurting right now – construction. The housing crisis and subsequent decline in residential investment has left many unemployed, but if they can make the transition into the nation’s fifth largest market sector, there may be a green collar there waiting to be worn.

Vampire Weekend – Bryn

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three minutes//to save the world

August 8, 2008

Today, the 3-minute interview series on DC Examiner featured Nic – here’s the piece.

The 3-minute interview

WASHINGTON – Nicolas Jammet and two of his Georgetown University classmates cooked up the idea for Georgetown frozen yogurt and salad joint Sweetgreen when they were still undergraduates. Now, with business booming, the trio is opening a second location in Dupont Circle and possibly a third one elsewhere in the city later this year.

How did you come up with the idea for Sweet Green?

Basically, going to Georgetown for four years, we knew what the market was like. I’m from New York and my two partners are from L.A. — we kind of knew there were these new quick-service options opening up, but we didn’t see anything like that in D.C. We were seniors a year and a half ago and started developing it then. We were doing construction in the middle of finals and stuff, and we finally opened that August.

Did you work on the idea in a business class?

Two of us were finance majors and one a business major. All three of us took a class called entrepreneurship at Georgetown. We didn’t do the business plan for Sweetgeen for the class because you weren’t allowed to do bars or restaurants, but we pulled everything we learned from that class and put it to use the next semester.

You guys were the first to bring the Pinkberry concept of natural frozen yogurt to DC – was Pinkberry your inspiration?

Our yogurt is different from Pinkberry’s. We spent a lot of time in test kitchens developing our own recipes – how we wanted the texture to be, how sweet we wanted it to be. Pinkberry was the first to bring it back to the forefront and make it trendy again, but frozen yogurt back in the day – this is how it started out. I think the natural frozen yogurt flavor kind of got lost when places like TCBY started opening up.

-Taryn Luntz

Nic was also quoted in an article on Triple Pundit about the growing trend of organic and green restaurants. The article mentioned the success of Organic-To-Go as evidence of this trend, but points out that there’s more to being green than just being organic.

Beyond Chipotle – Organic Food Offerings Continue to Grow and Thrive

“The fact that a public company would consider the timing right for organic fast food in Washington is encouraging. However, it is important to remember that organic is not all there is to being a green or sustainable business. A few months back, Triple Pundit presented a number of fundamentals needed for a restaurant to be green. Unfortunately, so far Organic To Go does not appear to be implementing many of these practices, but emphasizing and serving only organic food is a good start. Nicolas Jammet, a co-owner of Sweetgreen, another organic restaurant in D.C. which does include more sustainability-minded practices and is also expanding, believes the growing organic restaurant competition can only be a good thing, “There is a lot of room for these kinds of concepts, and we welcome them because it expands overall interest.” (from Washington Post)

And beyond good customer health, who knows how much influence these restaurants could have? Perhaps whichever party is in control in D.C. come January might be a little more inclined to support organic farm policy if they keep running into tasty, healthy, organic sandwich options for their power lunches.“

Just another reminder of how you can vote with your dollar every time you eat lunch.

Madonna ft. Justin Timberlake – Four Minutes

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The Faint – The Geeks Were Right

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Green Cup of Polo

July 21, 2008

Saturday July 19 2008, the Capitol Polo Club hosted the second annual Green Cup of Polo to benefit the environment. With an opening speech by co-founder of EarthEcho International Alexandra Cousteau of the distinguished Cousteau family, the Green Cup’s mission is to “raise awareness of environmental issues and benefit four prominent environmental organizations: ACORE (American Council On Renewable Energy), EPIC (Equestrian Partners in Conservation), Live Green, and EarthEcho International. The Green Cup brings together polo enthusiasts, top DC-environmentalists, business leaders, elected representatives, diplomats, horse lovers, fashionistas, and socialites.”

As a restaurant sponsor of the VIP area at the Green Cup, we showed the Sweetgreen approach to eco-friendly and sustainable dining at the event. Using our biodegradable packaging and utensils and organic and locally-grown produce, we served miniaturized versions of four of our signature salads.

The Guacamole Greens came as a bite-sized baked tortilla scoop containing half a cherry tomato, a few onions, a scoop of avocado and just a touch of lime cilantro jalapeno vinaigrette; we made up the Chic P salad and put it into mini whole wheat pita breads; the Curry Gold chicken salad was scooped onto crisp Belgian endive leaves and topped with almonds and edible pansies; and the Caprese was served kebab-style on mini bamboo skewers.

We had a great time coming up with the menu and the event went really well. Although it was an incredibly hot and humid day, the crowd were all in a great mood and happy to be there supporting the Green Cup’s cause, so it was a very enjoyable afternoon. For more info on the Green Cup visit their website at http://www.greencuppolo.com/.

sustainability/playlist of the week

July 9, 2008

sweetgreen featured as a sustainable restaurant

The April issue of The New York Times Magazine was dedicated to taking “a few bold steps to make your carbon footprint smaller.” The Green Issue included a great article by Michael Pollan (famous omnivore and defender of food) called “Why Bother?” Pollan takes on the question of why we, as individuals, should bother to make changes in our consumption habits when our personal actions seem so insignificant compared to a melting glacier halfway around the world.

“There are so many stories we can tell ourselves to justify doing nothing, but perhaps the most insidious is that, whatever we do manage to do, it will be too little too late…

Whatever we can do as individuals to change the way we live at this suddenly very late date does seem utterly inadequate to the challenge. It’s hard to argue with Michael Specter, in a recent New Yorker piece on carbon footprints, when he says: “Personal choices, no matter how virtuous [N.B.!], cannot do enough. It will also take laws and money.” So it will. Yet it is no less accurate or hardheaded to say that laws and money cannot do enough, either; that it will also take profound changes in the way we live. Why? Because the climate-change crisis is at its very bottom a crisis of lifestyle — of character, even. The Big Problem is nothing more or less than the sum total of countless little everyday choices, most of them made by us (consumer spending represents 70 percent of our economy), and most of the rest of them made in the name of our needs and desires and preferences.“

Pollan’s article may be targeted towards the individual consumer, but the idea that small changes can snowball into big effects is applicable in the business world as well (you may have heard about the new milk carton, and that Wal-Mart is venturing into local and organic foods), and more specifically among restaurants. Cork & Knife’s article earlier this year provides a direct example – changes in individual taste and consumer demand enabling restaurants to make more sustainable choices, as we’ve been doing at Sweetgreen.

“It seems many consumers are willing to pay more for environmentally friendly food. According to Zagat’s 2007 America’s Top Restaurants, 65 percent of surveyors said they would pay more for food that has been sustainably raised or procured. According to 2007 National Restaurant Association research, 62 percent of adults said they would likely choose a restaurant based on its environmental friendliness.

And so if the people will follow the local goods, then there can be a business advantage there for restaurateurs. Sweetgreen, a recently opened cafe in Georgetown, was recently added to the GRA’s list of certified green restaurants. In order to become certified, each member must use a comprehensive recycling system for all products, be free of Styrofoam, and commit to completing four environmental steps, set by GRA, per year of membership, such as use of energy efficient light bulbs or water saving toilets. With Sweetgreen’s biodegradable forks and spoons, bowls made of corn based material, and energy-efficient wiring, the restaurant lives up to GRA standards.“

Restaurant Reformer’s mission is to help improve sustainability in the “notoriously energy- and resource-intensive” restaurant industry. They also featured Sweetgreen a couple of months ago, noting our “high efficiency lighting and reclaimed interior wood.”

If you’re confused about sustainability/not convinced of its importance, also check out another Michael Pollan article which clears up these questions with anecdotes about MRSA, the antibiotic-resistant strain of Staph bacteria, and an epidemic among honeybees. Hopefully it inspires you to take “a few bold steps,” thanks for supporting Sweetgreen as we take ours.

and finally… playlist of the week!

Some international tunes, to be enjoyed sustainably.

Triple XXX- Ya No Te Acuerda?

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Bob Marley – Could You Be Loved (Bahian Roots Remix)

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Charlie Brown Jr. – Ela Vai Voltar

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Seu Jorge – Tive Razão

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Orishas – El Kilo

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20Syl – Du Sable Sur Les Paupières

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rising energy prices – the silver lining

June 25, 2008

We could have saved the Earth, but we were too damned cheap.
-Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Modern technology
Owes ecology
An apology.
-Alan M. Eddison

No one likes to buy a product knowing it may be less than great for the environment, but most of us have at one time or another opted against the recycled, organic, cage-free, energy-efficient or otherwise green or eco-friendly choice because it was more expensive than the “regular” version. The Wall Street Journal published an article today on why this may soon be changing.

Green Products Gain From New Price Equation – They Find New Buyers As High Energy Costs Hurt Regular Brands

by ARDEN DALE

Does it finally pay to go green?

Consumers typically have paid a premium for environmentally friendly products. But with soaring energy prices pushing up the price of mainstream goods, green products are becoming just as — or even more — affordable these days.

The reason is that environmentally friendly products usually have less fossil-fuel content than competing nongreen brands. Their manufacture also tends to consume less oil, since green entrepreneurs favor renewable-energy and energy-saving practices.

The new price parity — and, in some cases, advantage — is allowing businesses to draw in the growing ranks of consumers who want to go green, but have so far resisted because of the higher cost. It also is giving some companies incentive to branch out into other eco-friendly products and even adopt more energy-saving manufacturing techniques.

The article mentions Eco-Products Inc., the company that makes the compostable corn-based containers we use at Sweetgreen for our yogurt, as a manufacturer benefiting from increasing fossil fuel costs.

Instead of petroleum-based plastic, Eco-Products uses a corn-based polymer produced by NatureWorks LLC of Minnetonka, Minn., a unit of Cargill & Teijin Ltd. of Japan. Dennis McGrew, CEO of NatureWorks, says the polymer has roughly 68% less fossil-fuel content than petroleum-based plastics and emits less than 90% as many greenhouse gases.

If you’ve been into Sweetgreen lately, you know that our yogurt containers aren’t the only things in the store made from corn – the bowl your salad comes in will also compost completely after you toss it. Our utensils, which we buy from World Centric, are also made from biodegradable polymer that is corn starch-based. You may also know that Sweetgreen is completely wind-powered: we buy our electricity from Clean Currents.

Here is the link to the full WSJ article. Check it out and try to look on the bright side of the rising energy prices – we may have to think twice every time we get in the car but in the end it could help us make more sustainable choices.