Los Angeles just announced a green business certification program they plan to launch on a full-scale in six months. The city hopes restaurants, retailers, hotels and others will participate.
Years in the making, the program is a joint-effort between the city’s environmental people and The GreenLA Coalition, 
with the chamber of commerce and convention and visitors group playing along.
The program would hopefully include many of the city’s 11,000 + restaurants, which would be great. Just one thing doesn’t work for me:
One of the proposed criteria is that restaurants would need to recycle cardboard, paper, glass, metal and plastics but could choose whether to collect food waste for off-site composting.
Let me get this straight–there’s neither a carrot nor a stick for handling food waste in a green manner? (Not to mention the lack of any incentives to reduce or donate edible waste)
In the LA Times article from above, we learn that restaurant participation in the trial green bin collection program (composting) is subsidized. And restaurants can usually reduce their trash bill by removing food from the regular waste stream. Then why not roll out green bin collection city-wide and make composting a mandatory part of the green business certification?
Comments
5 responses to “LA’s Green Certification Omission”
Jon,
I don’t know if it’s of any use to you, but I’ve assembled a packet of information that I’ve found great success in handing to restaurateurs and other folks in the food industry regarding food rescue and recovery. It’s really quite simple, but very effective at communicating the message that food rescue and recovery is not only safe, ethical, advantageous but it’s fiscally sound as well. The key piece of this packet is actually a pamphlet I created about food rescue and recovery using many photos from your blog. I wonder if there’s some way I could send you the files, in the hopes that as the new (first) Food Waste Czar you might find some use for it.
Peace and Love,
Dan
Dan, sounds like a really useful document. If you send it to me as a PDF, that would be ideal. I could find a use for it right now–on this site as a resource for restaurateurs!
Send it along to: WastedFood at gmail dot com
I have to diagree with you here – I don’t think that the way to go is to require that everyone’s pet peeve gets included. That’s going to be a dissuader to people who want to become certified, but then see that the range of what they need to do is overwhelming.
Let them start out, and work to see how they can improve once they get it going.
And no, I’m not calling food waste a pet peeve, but I am saying that it’s easier to learn first that you can break down and recycle cardboard boxes and build on that, instead of throwing the whole thing at them all at once.
GLM–I see your point, but I think only a small number of restaurants will voluntarily compost. You might be able to convince me if the agreement included a clause that made composting mandatory in a few years, or something like that.
Better yet–how about incentives for those who compost. I’m not too picky–carrot or stick–I just want to keep that food waste out of the landfills.
I do agree with you on that. I’d like to see restaurants serving smaller portions (and a smaller price) and governments allowing excess, uneaten, food to be donated to homeless shelters or emergency food pantries, too.