Tag Archives | Going Green

The Trials Of Going Green: Tundra Revamps Its Waste Management System

Tweet When Tundra discovered that a waste management snafu had resulted in office recycling bins getting thrown in the trash early this year, we decided a complete waste management audit was needed, and fast. The lessons we’ve learned in the past three months have been both illuminating and hard won, and that’s why we’d like [...]

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Green Restaurants: Turning Food Waste Into Electricity

Tweet San Francisco restaurants are often on the cutting edge of sustainability and green practices.  They’ve pioneered ways to turn food waste into fertilizer, reduce food miles by sourcing locally, and decrease waste through recycling and composting. More recently, the East Bay Municipal Utility District has started converting up to 200 tons of food waste [...]

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How To Source Food Locally: A Business Guide To Success

Tweet Local food.  It sounds great on paper, and it may even be the thing restaurant patrons claim they care about most.  But the reality is that restaurants are businesses, and the restaurant business is one of the toughest gigs out there.  Sounding good isn’t going to be enough to justify a rise in food [...]

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How A Low Flow Valve Can Improve Your Cash Flow (AND Green Cred)

Tweet Your restaurant uses a lot of water.  Between the water you serve your guests, the ice machine, the dish machine, and the sink, any restaurant goes through a lot of water on a daily basis.  I don’t have to tell you how much that water costs you.  I’m sure you’re reminded every time you [...]

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Which Energy Efficiency Upgrades Are The Best Investment?

Tweet Let’s face it—restaurants are energy hogs. According to the National Restaurant Association, restaurants use five times more energy per square foot than other types of commercial buildings. And of the energy that restaurants use, the kitchen uses five times more than the rest of the building. Energy costs, on average, represent approximately 30% of [...]

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The Green Restaurant Association: Sustainable Knowledge Is Power

Tweet When Michael Oshman started the Green Restaurant Association (GRA) in 1990, hardly anybody in the food service industry thought much about sustainability. “The green business movement wasn’t something that really existed,” he says.  “We were one of the first organizations that wanted to help businesses.  We asked: ‘What if we went to businesses and [...]

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Person with green recycling bin

Your Restaurant’s Guide To Commercial Composting

Tweet Every to go container, every disposable cup, and every plastic fork your restaurant uses ends up in a landfill somewhere.  Over the course of a year that adds up to millions of tons of trash from all the restaurants in the United States.  For most restaurants, these disposable items are a necessary part of [...]

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Ten Cheap Ways To Increase Restaurant Efficiency (AND Profits!)

Tweet 1. Start-up, Shutdown Schedules Not everything needs to be turned on right away when the first cook arrives. Equipment start-up schedules similar to just-in-time ordering saves energy with no investment. 2. Low flow aerators These are potentially one of the lowest priced efficiency measures a restaurant can buy. Aerators range from .50 to a [...]

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Is Your Recycling Program Really Working?

Tweet We’ve talked before on The Back Burner about the importance of greening your restaurant operation for two reasons: because customers appreciate it (and are beginning to expect it) and because frequently green practices mean cost savings. Unfortunately recycling is not a practice that usually saves your operation money.  It is, however, one of the [...]

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Green Restaurant Tips: Recycling Feels Good

Tweet Unlike the tips previously offered in this series, recycling probably won’t save your restaurant or commercial kitchen money.  And recycling will probably add work to your schedule and headaches to your day. So why recycle?  Well, there are a few very compelling reasons, and not all of them altruistic, for introducing a recycling program: [...]

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