Report Looks at Green Efforts in Quick Service Restaurants

By GreenBiz Staff
Published June 30, 2008

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LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- In the new report "Going Green is Red Hot," Fast Casual magazine and website backs up the assertion of the title by detailing sustainability best practices already in place in restaurants.

The 40-page report provides a look at trends and practices in equipment, construction, food, packaging and marketing. It includes results from surveys along with comments from service industry insiders.

Aimed at restaurants that fall under the fast casual and quick-service banner, the report looks at how to sustainable food choices, eco-friendly packaging, tax incentives for green businesses and environmental legislation.

One of the companies highlighted in the report is Pizza Fusion, which has more than 20 locations in the United States and has strived to integrate sustainability throughout its operations. The company uses organic food and ingredients, delivers pizza with hybrid vehicles, buys renewable energy wind credits to offset all its energy use, gives discounts to customers who bring pizza boxes to store locations to be recycled, has employee uniforms made of 100 percent organic cotton and uses biodegradable food containers and utensils.

"Surveys indicate that consumers are increasingly likely to make environmentally-friendly choices with their purchasing power, signaling a potential sea change in buying practices -- a wave restaurant operators can catch or be caught by," said Christopher Hall, author of "Going Green is Red Hot."

The report is available for purchase as a download or hard copy.

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Use of biodegradable utensils and food packages?

Is it useful to offer biodegradable utensils if they're not returned to a composting operation? and call that 'green'
I do applaud Pizza Fusion's efforts and think they're doing a great thing with this, but the efficacy of that one element does generate some concern.
It is the general experience that such utensils are not compostable in backyard compost heaps and therefore one may question the overall utility of switching to biodegradable utensils if they're destined only for landfills.
Our local coop grocery 'chain' here in Orange Co. NC -- Weaver Street Market, has begun a take back program for its PLA take out containers so those can be funneled into the store's commercial compost collection program.
Further: in this commercial composting program, any paper take out container can be composted, so no premium needs to be paid for special biodegradable containers.
Finally: is there some definitive and 'official' parsing of the terminology biodegradable v. compostable. My lay-understanding is that biodegradable is still able to have petro-plastics in it that break down into tiny petro particles while the substrate of organic material holding the utensil, bag, etc. together does in fact compost while terming something 'compostable' means (to me) that it is 100% compostable and breaks down into only C,H,O and N simply and non-toxically and no nano petro particles are in it......anyone know the definitive answer?