- July 23, 2020
- Areca Plates, Eco Friendliness, Green Earth, Green Planet
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- eco-friendly restaurant, sustainable restaurant practices
14 easy ways to setup a ecofriendly restaurant
To become an ecofriendly restaurant you must adopt environment-friendly practices in the day-to-day operations. Sustainable practices also strengthen the brand image among the customers and also contributes to customer loyalty.
Today, customers are ready to pay a little extra price to dine in sustainable restaurant. And, eco-friendliness has become one of the vital factors that drive customers to purchase. So, here we will how restaurant owners can transform the conventional operations into sustainable operations in their restaurant.
1. Choose eco-friendly buildings:
When you want to make your building eco-friendly, it begins with choosing the sustainable raw material. You must carefully select materials that will reduce the impact on the environment and also sourced locally.
When you plan to construct a ecofriendly restaurant building:
- Develop a building plan with proper ventilation. The natural airflow in and out with regulate the temperature to normal.
- You can also use clay-based bricks for raising the walls.
- Go for used doors and windows from the demolished building.
- You can build chairs and tables using reclaimed woods. This way, you will also give life to old unused lumber. See why to choose reclaimed wood.
2. Take advantage of Solar power:
If your place receives sunlight through most of the year, install solar roof panels in your building to harvest solar energy. This energy is renewable, free, and clean.
Solar power is not only limited to generate electricity, but it also can be used for cooking. See how Shiridi Sai Baba mega kitchen uses parabolic solar panels to harness the sunlight to cook food for thousands of people.
Using solar energy can have a significant impact on the environment and reduces your carbon footprint. Making use of the solar energy brings down the cost in your sustainable restaurant, however, it can only be used during the day, and high setup cost.
3.Install the biogas plant:
Restaurants generate a lot of food wastes daily. The food wastes are highly perishable, and you may want to get rid of it on the same day. So, you pay someone to pick up the trash to dispose.
Instead of disposing of the waste, What if you can generate energy from it, which you can use to cook? Yes, with the help of the anaerobic digestion, you can turn the food wastes into cooking gas. During the day, you can cook using solar energy and biogas for cooking dishes in the early morning and evening.
Your restaurant becomes self-sustainable when it comes to cooking fuel. Additionally, you get the slurry as an output from this biogas digester, which you can use as fertilizer to your food garden.
Now, you will have a question. Self-sustainability is okay, but how is it environment-friendly? The bacteria produce greenhouse gases like methane and hydrogen sulfide during decomposition of the organic wastes in the landfill. The more the greenhouse gas released in the environment warms up the planet and causes climate change. But with the biogas digestor, you can avoid all these and put the same bacteria to work for your benefit.
4.Grow the veggies yourself
The next important step in going green in the restaurant business is to grow your vegetables and green leaf by yourself. You can grow some essential herbs and vegetables in a small piece of land. The urban restaurants are not left out; you can set up a terrace garden.
You can also set up fully automated hydroponics systems, where the yield is higher, consistent. Furthermore, there is no space constraint. You can start it in a small space and grow your essentials.
One more advantage in growing herbs and vegetables is— the moment you harvest the veggies, it goes directly into cooking without losing its flavors and aroma. USP
5. Source supplies from an organic farmer
Organic products are right for health and the environment. In sustainable farming practices, farmers use native seeds. They refrain from using chemical-based pesticides and fertilizers. The pesticides and fertilizers are made by themselves from the natural ingredients and use cattle waste as manure.
How is it, eco-friendly? Organic pesticides repel plant-eating insects by making the plant leaf taste bad. It creates a thriving ecosystem for the insects that prey on plant-eating insects. So, the natural army of insects protects the crop for free. The insects that eat plants is the becomes the food for other insects, and this insect becomes prey for the bigger organism like rat and frog, and the food chain is protected.
Whereas when you use chemical-based pesticides, it kills all the insects and destroys the ecosystem. The chemicals also leech into the soil and pollute the groundwater as well.
6. Shop Local
Shopping local comes with the advantage of saving the cost of transporting goods long-distance. As long as your menu recipes don’t need an exotic product, ecofreindly restaurants must go for the local shopping.
7. Energy-efficient appliances:
When you setup an ecofriendly restaurant, tt is vital to reduce your energy consumption. Your kitchen has appliances, and the dining area might have light fixtures that may consume more energy. When the high power consuming appliance wears off, replace it with an efficient one.
8. Use chemical-free cleaning agents
In restaurants washing dishes is an essential daily task. The harsh chemicals used to clean the dishes are not environment friendly and also cause an allergic skin reaction. It not appropriately handled; the greywater leach through soil and pollute the groundwater.
When you switch to the all-natural cleaning products, you create a healthier workplace for dishwasher and goodness for the environment. And if you are a frugal-minded and want to be self-sustainable, you can produce the cleaning products with the regular household items. For example, you can use tamarind and lemon juice and the natural scrubber(loofah) to clean the dishes. This recipe for cleaning products also removes the stained odor on utensils. Without wasting the water, you can use this water for your garden, as it contains only natural ingredients.
9. Season based menu
Adjust your menu items based on the season. As a restaurateur, you must insist your chef create dishes with the products available in the season. As a result, you will also reduce the food storage cost, and your customers will also appreciate your effort to bring fresh food to them.
10. Use eco-friendly togo boxes
If your restaurant provides a food parcel, switch to areca food containers instead of plastic covers and foam containers. Areca leaf food containers are 100% natural, chemical-free, and biodegradable. These areca containers have a rustic on the outside and easy to handle. Customers can dispose of without the guilt of dumping the waste. Because the areca products are broken down and decomposed, all in a matter of 90 days.
If your restaurant serves buffet, you can also try the areca plates.Manufacturers use areca sheaths(a natural fallen leaf material) to produce the areca plates and areca food containers. And the best thing about areca sheath products is that they don’t cut trees to procure raw material. It is a waste from the tree turned into plates. Learn more about areca plates manufacturing.
11. Ask customers to bring their boxes.
Inform your customers that they can get discounts if they bring their boxes from home to take away food parcels. This announcement will bring in more customers, increases awareness. You will gain customer respect, and they will also stay loyal to your business.
To do this, you don’t have to sacrifice your margin. All you have to do is cut the food packaging material cost and pass it on to your customer.
12. Combine Delivery
If you have to deliver food parcels, consider combining orders, and deliver it in a single ride. Use bi-cycles to deliver parcels to customer’s places that are within the radius of a mile or two from your restaurant. Switch to e-bikes from the conventional bikes to deliver food to the far distant customers.
13. Optimize water usage
Don’t waste water as it might add more cost to run the restaurant. Fix the leaking pipes and install the automatic systems to dispense water only when needed. Ecofriendly restaurants must install the water-saving nozzles in the mouth of the tap to save more water.
14. Reduce, recycle, and reuse
When you bring new equipment to your restaurant, see if you can reuse old ones. This way you reduce manufacturing pollution and also save a lot of money. Separate the items such as newspapers, aluminum cans for recycling and make sure they don’t end up in the landfill. The greywater used for washing hands and dishes can be filtered and used to flush toilets.
Finally, keep in mind that reducing, recycling, and reusing the materials is the only effective way to create an ecofriendly restaurant and protect our ecosystem.
Rathi co-founded CrozBorder Exports in the year 2017 and deals with manufacturing, consolidating and supplying eco-friendly products(Areca plates) to global customers.