The Clean Green Impact and the Restaurant Industry

Restaurants, just like numerous other businesses and industries, are encouraged to make changes to their operations that are environmentally and eco-friendly. “Greening” restaurants starts with reviewing your current practices and procedures, for every function and task, using the following suggestions.

The Clean Green Impact and the Restaurant Industry
  • Divide your restaurant into distinct areas. Break the restaurant into front-of-house, back-of-house, take-out, and restroom areas. By breaking down each section into different areas, it is easier to identify processes, procedures, products, and services you could make green.
  • Within each area, review job tasks and functions to determine which ones could be made green. For instance, if you are currently using disposable paper napkins, consider replacing these with reusable cloth restaurant napkins.
  • Replace existing products with eco-friendly ones. Make a list of cleaning supplies, dish soaps, and other products you use in your operation. Look for equivalent green products you can use to obtain the same results, and start implementing them into the day-to-day operations.
  • Talk to your supply chain vendors and suppliers about green products and services. Your goal is to find sustainable products that are eco-friendly in your supply chain, from vendors and suppliers who also use green processes. For example, here at Prudential Overall Supply, we strongly support and practice the clean green sustainability movement. To this end, we offer a wide range of services and products to help our restaurant clients with greening efforts.

Why Not Simply Use Disposable, Yet Recyclable Products?

Recycling is an important aspect to greening your restaurant, but is just one aspect to a complete green movement. In addition, recent changes in the clean green movement now focus more on sustainability. Sustainability is developing solutions, along with working with vendors and suppliers, to ensure a much broader eco-friendly approach.

A complete sustainability plan should include several eco-friendly restaurant practices, including:

  • Reducing Water Usage – Invest in energy- and water-saving dishwashers, low flush toilets, no-flush urinals, and other such items to cut back on how much water your restaurant uses.
  • Properly Managing Waste – Divide trash and waste into recyclable containers and actual waste, and do not forget cooking oil is recyclable.
  • Supporting Green Products, Services, and Vendors – Use safer and biodegradable cleaning products, and vendors and suppliers who follow similar clean green practices.
  • Donating Excess Food to Local Charities – If you have food that is about to expire and will not be using it, it is better to donate it to a charity where it can be used to feed children and homeless people in your area.
  • Support Local Farmers by Sourcing Food and Ingredients from Them – By obtaining food and ingredients locally, it means your restaurant is using less fuel, since items do not have to be shipped as far.
Going Green

As you can see, greening in the restaurant industry encompasses much more than simply recycling. For further assistance with greening your restaurant, please feel free to contact Prudential Overall Supply at (800) 767-5536 today.