Sustainability for a Better World: How to Make Your Restaurant Eco-friendlier

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The whole world is becoming aware of the effects of global warming and climate change. As a result, many industries worldwide are changing how they function to address the overwhelming impact of these man-made catastrophes.

The restaurant industry is one of the largest industries in the world. It gains billions of revenue annually and satisfies billions of consumers. However, this particular sub-sector of the food industry creates a decent chunk of carbon emissions that affect the general state of the environment.

It’s estimated that the food sector produces a staggering 22% of the world’s greenhouse emissions. That’s a huge amount and one that can’t be ignored. So if you’re planning to start a restaurant, it must reduce its carbon footprint as much as possible. It should also ensure that it’s not affecting any natural resources while doing its daily operations. Here are some ways you can do that.

Purchase Local Ingredients

Reducing your restaurant’s carbon footprint is all about changing small things in your pipeline. One of these things is how you source your ingredients.

The way we source our ingredients is crucial in our restaurant business. But there is no point in purchasing ingredients that are thousands of miles away from our restaurant if we have a variation of the ingredient in our neighborhood.

Transportation of ingredients is one of the main reasons the restaurant industry produces so much carbon footprint every year. By purchasing local ingredients, you are likely to buy fresher ingredients at a much lower price. So consider having a closer relationship with your local grocers to ensure that you get the best price from them.

By reducing the transportation costs of your ingredients, you can reduce your carbon footprint by a staggering amount. Another way you can reduce your carbon footprint is by recycling and reusing items.

Recycle and Reuse

Plastic bottles, soda cans, and empty jars of ingredients—all of these things and many more are everyday items in the restaurant business. But they are also very much recyclable and reusable.

Have a good relationship with your local recycling plant so that you can give them any plastic bottles and soda cans you use every day. Your restaurant can embrace reusing and recycling by partnering with the right waste management company, such as wasteawaysystems.com.

Wash empty jars of ingredients and store jams and sauces in them. These are just some many ways you can recycle and reuse items in your restaurant.

Once you’ve done these things, you can significantly reduce your carbon footprint. However, an eco-friendly restaurant doesn’t stop there. It also looks after the water it uses, as it is one of the most precious resources in the world. You can start by having to invest in pumps in your restaurant.

Pumps for the Environment

Having a pump can be helpful to your restaurant and the surrounding environment. It can help pump out waste that can affect the environment and fix any clogs your restaurant might have.

Dependable brands such as Carver Pump produce quality pumps that can help your restaurant with environmental problems. These pumps are resilient and helpful in segregating oily waste in your restaurant. They can also remove any solid substances that might have formed in your pipes from.

Having a pump in your restaurant is a good choice because it can solve any clogging problems. It can also act as a means of stopping any blockages, which can ultimately have an effect on the environment. So consider investing in one right now. If you want to increase the potency of this strategy, you should also consider investing in an oil-water separator.

Oil Separator

Oil is an ingredient that every restaurant uses but one that is disposed of rather poorly. Many restaurants resort to disposing of oil and grease down the pipes, where it can contaminate nearby bodies of water. Many communities rely on these bodies of water for their everyday needs, and as a local business, it is your job to ensure that such waters don’t get contaminated.

The restaurant industry does not contaminate bodies of water the same way the oil industry does. However, it can still affect bodies of water nearby due to the poor disposal of oil. By having an oil separator, you don’t have to manually dispose of the oil you use because the contraption will do it for you.

Once you have an oil separator installed, it will automatically separate the oil from the water in your pipes. If you have pumps installed, you can easily use those pumps to remove any oil that has been separated from the water and properly dispose of them. It does require a bit more work before you close the restaurant every day, but it’s certainly worth doing.

As a restaurant, we should be aware of our ability to damage the environment. By being aware of these things, we can become an eco-friendly business that watches over our community’s interests. Once we can go down this path, we can become examples of a sustainable model that every business can follow in the future.

 

Jeff Campbell
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