Some restaurants are taking radical steps to be climate-friendly, whether or not their patrons are ready.
When the after-dinner crowds finish their kombucha cocktails and filter out the doors of, a LA-inspired all-day cafe in New York’s trendy Soho neighborhood, a manager snaps a picture of the compost, recycling, and trash accumulated throughout the day. Each bag is weighed and added to a spreadsheet that’s been carefully updated for over a year in pursuit of one goal: to become the first certified zero-waste restaurant in New York.to generate 22–33 billion pounds of food waste each year.
“Everyone is throwing around the word ‘sustainability’ and the word ‘zero-waste,’ but if we have this certification from a certain board, someone who dines with us can look that up and understand what that means,” says west~bourne’s chief of staffIn Brooklyn, Rhodora’s zero-waste mission is printed right onto the menus. The natural wine bar doesn’t have a chef—instead, each member of the small staff greets guests, pours wine, and assembles food in equal measure.
But compost is just the end game—real waste reduction begins with the menu. west~bourne is strictly vegetarian to avoid stepping in meat’s carbon footprint; Rhodora’s menu, which largely consists of easily prepped conservas like mussels escabeche and cheese, is governed by what can be delivered by its network of largely local suppliers.
After months of radically reimagining operations, zero-waste restaurants are faced with a new challenge: customers. Rhodora doesn’t have a dumpster to accommodate gum wrappers, juice boxes, and other flotsam often left behind by guests. Anything that can’t go into the usual recycling bin gets sent to TerraCycle, a New Jersey-based company that transforms hard-to-recycle materials.
“How do we relay this to customers without sounding aggressive, like you can't enjoy your time here?” says Rhodora staffer
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