A guide to planet-friendly restaurants
Restaurant waste is one of those things most diners aren’t likely to obsess about while actually eating in a restaurant. Once you start wondering if paper napkins are recycled, if the plastic wrap is necessary, if food scraps are composted, the querying is endless. Basically, it starts to suck the fun out of the situation.
But LEAF (Leaders in Environmentally Accountable Foodservice) helps guide and inspire restaurants in environmental responsibility. Each year for Earth Day (celebrated on April 22), the national non-profit organization releases a guide to green restaurants. There are now 85 on the list, from food trucks to school cafeterias to upscale dining rooms. Our province is well represented, and Quebec City’s Chic Alors! is among Canada’s top five sustainable restaurants.
LEAF president and dietitian Janine Windsor worked in restaurants and bars while attending university, and saw plenty of waste and barriers to good practice. For example, during a hospital kitchen internship she witnessed singleuse milk and juice boxes being thrown away instead of returned and recycled for deposit.
“They had no one to pick up the containers, no space to sort them in the kitchen. It actually cost money to throw them out, but management just wasn’t motivated to solve the issues,” she says.
Windsor launched LEAF in 2010; the first LEAF-certified restaurant was River Café in Calgary, where she lived at the time. (LEAF is now based in Vancouver).
LEAF has three levels of certification. Auditors award points in areas including recycling, sourcing food locally, and energy and water efficiency. Windsor says thirdlevel restaurants “are definitely leaders in the green food service industry.”
Windsor is impressed with how 25 of Quebec’s school and university cafeterias in the COOPSCO network gained certification last year. “It’s harder for larger corporations to do things like purchase locally, get the quantity and reliability that they need, and they’re not as flexible with menus,” she says. They also need approval up the bureaucratic chain. When a big company goes green, “the whole organization’s really motivated to reduce their footprint.”
Hugues Philippin is co-owner of Chic Alors! in Quebec City, one of Canada’s highest-level LEAF-certified restaurants. He hates waste, and has run his tony pizzeria as environmentally minded as possible for more than 20 years.
When Philippin started the business, environmentally responsible infrastructure didn’t exist. Then Quebec City started picking up cardboard for recycling, then other recyclables, and began a pilot project for compostables. Though the project stalled, the city kept existing customers and picks up compost — even biodegradable plastics — for free twice a week. “That gave us a boost, because much of the volume of what we throw out is organic,” he says.
New technology makes energy efficiency much easier, Philippin adds. His building has a geothermal system, and makes use of the pizza oven’s heat in winter to warm incoming air. The flat roof allows for beehives and a garden. “We stopped buying herbs altogether,” he says. The staff want to work there, he adds, because they’re attracted by the values. And Chic Alors! has been delivering pizza via electric car since 2009.
Though he clearly has a big green heart, Philippin swears that “it’s all been pretty much for business reasons.” The restaurant saves about $19,000 a year just by reducing fees for hauling away garbage. “Every time we save money, it’s profit,” he says.
In Montreal, Leméac restaurant is first-level LEAF certified. Fanny Poitras, manager of the venerable Outremont bistro, says they’ve always leaned green, and continue to evolve. Leméac changed the paper the menus are printed on, and recycles the paper on the tables. They just asked their fishmonger to use recyclable plastic containers instead of Styrofoam, “so there’s less to throw out,” Poitras says.
Poitras points out that restaurants have to pay roughly the same to have trash or recycling taken away, so why not recycle? “Eighty per cent of waste at a restaurant is either compost or recyclable,” she says. “It’s not more expensive to pay attention.”
“We’re starting a compost program,” Poitras adds proudly. It takes time to co-ordinate and train the staff, and she’s still searching for the best compost pickup company. “It’s a big change,” she says.
Though Windsor loves how LEAF is growing, she hopes to put herself out of a job and wishes LEAF could cease to exist in a decade.