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.