Running head: GREEN EGGS AND HAM 1

Green Eggs and Ham: The Sustainability Behind Restaurants

Isabella I. LaMonte

Legal Studies Academy

First Colonial High School

Abstract

The reader should focus on sustainability in restaurants and how sustainability can make a

difference in aiding the environment. They also should pay attention to how restaurants can

convert to sustainable practices easily. The addition of incentives for restaurants that participate

in sustainable practices would encourage restaurants to reduce their environmental impact. The

reason that should be focused on for inadequacy of the government is because federal agencies

have not been using their powers to stop the unsustainability found in restaurants. The United

States government currently has no regulations set to keep restaurant’s carbon footprint to a

minimum.

Keywords:​ Sustainability, restaurants, change, sustainability standards, bans, incentives

Green Eggs and Ham: The Sustainability behind Restaurants

“Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” is taught to children by adults who don’t understand it

themselves. “Reduce” needs to be implemented in the restaurant industry more by reducing the

amount of packaging used in the products they buy and the products the sell. Restaurants need to

consider the amount of waste that they produce. In order to limit this amount, they need to

“reuse” their resources. This can include getting rid of disposable napkins and start using

washable cloth. “Recycle” can be included many ways inside a restaurant. To be able to include

recycling, restaurants must have a recycling bin, and they are even able to use recycled materials,

such as recycled take out containers. The government currently has no regulations set to keep

every restaurant’s carbon footprint to a minimum. The current state of laws created by the

government surrounding the restaurant industry prevents the addition of new regulations,

enabling the protection of resource waste.

What Needs to Change?

George Bernard Shaw, who was an Irish playwright, once said, “Progress is impossible

without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” When

shopping or going out to eat, there are factors that must be put into consideration in order to

protect the consumers health and the environment. A green product is considered to have

minimal packaging and a long product life. It is also important to buy local products because it

reduces carbon emissions and improves the local economy (Environmental Protection Agency,

2017).
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More Organic

The associate vice president with the Environmental Defense Fund’s, also known as

EDF, ecosystems program, Josette Lewis, writes about how organic food has a major part of

having a sustainable food cycle. The Environmental Defense Fund focuses on more ways to

make commercial farming more sustainable, instead of focusing on subsistence farming.

Smithfield foods is one of the biggest pork suppliers that recently converted by adding

sustainable methods. The purchase of food for restaurants from companies such as Smithfield

Foods would help promote a sustainable food system; this is considered better than purchasing

food from companies that are non-environmentally conscious (Lewis, 2019). Furthermore,

restaurants should remember that the sales of meat-based products may not be unsustainable, but

compared to plant-based products it releases more emissions for the same unit of energy applied

to plants by farmers (Godfray, 2018).

The reduction of genetically modified organisms, also known as GMO’s, in foods should

be considered in a sustainable restaurant. This will not only reduce the health concerns of the

customers, but it will also eliminate the negative side effects of GMOs in farming. Some well

known health concerns connected with the consumption of GMOs can be the loss of antibacterial

resistance, mutations of DNA leading to cancer, and it can even cause allergy attacks (Barrell,

2019). However, sustainable restaurants must also be informed about the effects on the

environment produced by GMO farming. There are immediate repercussions on plants and

animals that are unrelated to the application purposes of GMOs. In particular, a study conducted

in 2016 (Semmens B., Semmens D., Thogmartin) connected the oncoming extinction of the

monarch butterfly with the new usage of herbicides applied for the production of GMO corn and
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soybeans. In addition to this major side effect, out-crossing, which is the pollination of a

domestic crop with a similar plant accidently, and insect resistance is occuring (ISAAA, 2018).

More Local

The government needs to consider incentivizing the use of local foods for restaurants.

There are many benefits to the incorporation of local food into restaurants. One of the biggest

benefits is local food only has to go through three steps. The steps of food is the production of

the food, the movement to direct food retailers/farmers markets, and then finally the food enters

our communities. Externally sourced food hs many more steps, but can be simplified to five

steps. The first step is the production of the food. Then that produced food goes to aggregation

and logistics; which is the transportation of the product. The next step is when the food gets

processed and distributed, most of the time by machines. The fourth step is when the product

reaches the market and is sold. Finally, the last step is when the produce eventually reaches the

community (Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems Funders, 2018).

Some benefits of food that was produced locally is that it can be considered healthier. It

can also help the economy of the community, and it provides customer relief when knowing

where the restaurant got products. The reason locally sourced food is environmentally friendly is

because it does not have as many chemicals used because it does not need a longer shelf life, and

it also does not need to go through a lot of transportation (Pilon, 2018). Overall, restaurants can

also consider on-site food production because it is the best possible way to be sustainable in the

restaurant industry.
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Less Waste

Aaron Deal, the executive chef and general manager of the restaurant River and Rail in

Roanoke, Virginia, shared his viewpoint on sustainability by stating “Utilising all the parts of an

animal, letting nothing go to waste and enabling families to eat well all year” (Dragovich, 2019).

Wasted food has been a rising issue in the United States. An evaluation provided by the United

States Department of Agriculture (2019) was that in 2010 alone, one-third of the 430 billion

pounds of food that was produced was not eaten. Food waste is one of the main problems in the

restaurant industry because the waste of food is a waste of money.

Food waste.​ Current stakeholders started to create goals for the year 2030 to encourage

less food waste. In order to meet their goals, they provided actions that can be taken by

restaurant owners, such as helping their customers reduce their waste by giving appropriate

information, reduce the unused food at stores and restaurants, and provide data of their current

food loss (Environmental Protection Agency, 2019).

A professor at George Mason University School of Law, named Baylen Linnekin, brings

a new idea to consider when discussing the sustainability of restaurants. He enlightens the

audience about how food waste around the world is happening because of government

regulations that encourage restaurants with unsustainable behavior. Then he explains that food

waste is not caused by too many people living a lavish lifestyle. He backs up his findings by

showing situations across the world where laws that have been made to prevent food waste were

canceled out by pre-existing laws (Baylen Linnekin, 2017).

Material waste.​ Plastic is a very cheap and useful material in the restaurant industry, but

the disadvantages outway the advantages. According to OCEANA (2019) approximately five to
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thirteen tons of plastic waste gets exposed to the ocean each year. Single use plastic is the reason

why so much plastic has been entering the ecosystem. They can also be called disposable plastics

because the plastic can only be used once before it has to be disposed of and/or recycled (Hollis,

2018). In order to lower the plastic waste produced by a restaurant, they should consider the

following helpful steps written by Mathew Hollis (2018), the president of a waste management

company named Elytus. A waste audit is an examination of a restaurants typical waste, and it can

be very helpful when considering what to change to reduce the amount of excess waste. It can

also provide information on products that are recyclables and products wasted that are able to be

reused. When considering what products to change, the restaurant should know the effects of the

waste produced during manufacturing and take into consideration to switching to reusable and

biodegradable options.

Water waste. ​Water is used during all the steps of making the food at a restaurant. It is

important to make sure restaurants are sustainability using water, since water waste is a difficult

thing to track. Walt Taylor (2019) wrote an informative article about restaurants waste of water.

She states that a regular restaurant will use about 3,000 to 7,000 gallons of water everyday.

The first step in reducing the waste of water in a restaurant is making conversations with

the employees about the water use and how they can reduce it. An example of this is fully

loading the dishwasher. The second step for improving a restaurants water usage is simply

changing the faucets in the kitchen and in the restrooms. In the kitchen, faucets should be

converted to low-flow pre-rinse spray valves. Additionally in the restrooms, the replaced faucets

will improve water efficiency if it had faucets with timers that cut off the water after a set

amount of time (Taylor, 2019).

Sustainability Reports

Sustainability reports are completed by companies in order to provide information about

their environmental effects made on a daily basis. They provide information using these

sustainability reports to consumers to gain their trust and sales. (GRI, 2018)

According to Restaurant News Resource, the parent company of Dunkin’ Donuts,

Dunkin’ Brands Group Inc. (DNKN), has recently made progress on reducing their carbon

footprint. They have proven this by releasing their most recent sustainability report, which shows

their key goals for 2019. One of DNKNs current goals they are on track to meet is a watershed

sustainability goal by transitioning their foam cups into the new double-walled paper cup. This

will cause about 19 million pounds of polystyrene to be removed from their waste per year.

Other than waste, another big problem in the coffee industry is the sustainability of the coffee

beans, which directly affects Dunkin’. To reduce the overharvesting and consumption of the

coffee plant, DNKN donates a percentage from every sale of their original blend coffee beans to

a non-profit organization called World Coffee Research. The reason for doing this is to

eventually make coffee a fully sustainable product. Finally, in order to reduce one of the biggest

environmental impact by companies, DNKN have improved their energy efficiency greatly over

the past five years with 340 certified Dunkin’ Doughnut green restaurants (Restaurant News

Resource, 2019).

Restaurant Sustainability Standards

There are currently no effective sustainability standards put in place for producers, such

as restaurants. But in order to help lead restaurants, the National Restaurant Association’s

Conserve program provided a useful list. The first step for a sustainable program to gain success
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is to include the input of contributors into the development of a restaurant. The reason this is

important is because the stakeholders are the programs future clientele. The next step is to review

the restaurants performance. The importance of this step is so they can identify what the

restaurant needs to do to gain success. After identifying the issues, a restaurant should set goals

in order to achieve the sustainability they are seeking as a company. Finally, the last step that

must be taken in order to have a successful sustainable restaurant is discovering recently

developed inventions that improve their quality and put them into effect at the restaurant (Prigge,

2017).

Green Restaurants

The Green Restaurants Association was created for restaurants to comply to by the

Federal Trade Commission, also known as the FTC, in order to give guidelines to marketers to

provide a clear way to see how environmentally conscious a restaurant is. It also provides ways

they can improve their sustainability as a restaurant. The Chairman of the FTC, Jon Leibowits,

believes this will be useful for customers who want to buy eco-friendly products.

Ocean Friendly Restaurants

The United Nations, also known as the UN, anticipates that in the year 2050 the

population will grow at least 30 percent. This will lead to having more people to feed. In order to

prevent the spread of hunger, food production must increase 70 percent. Restaurants need to rely

on seafood as a sustainable source of food to steer the world away from hunger, but overfishing,

pollution, and destruction of habitats prevents them from relying on it. Luckily, the government

can create policies allowing permanent sustainability in all restaurants achievable (OCEANA,

2018).
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The Ocean Friendly Restaurants program was created by the Surfrider Foundation and

the Virginia Chapter carried out this program in Virginia. Although the program is new, there are

many certified ocean friendly restaurants in Virginia Beach and are all very diverse, from a

coffee shop named Three Ships to a restaurant by the name of The Stockpot and even a brewery,

called Pleasure House. This program was created in order to provide aid to restaurants that

follow their criteria. Decrease plastic waste, incentivize sustainable exercises, ban the use of the

foam material made of polystyrene are their goals of Ocean Friendly Restaurants (Surfrider

Foundation, 2019).

To be considered an Ocean Friendly Restaurant, a restaurant is required to take part in

five mandatory criterias: provide straws or takeaway utensils only upon request (exceptions may

be made for reusable straws, paper straws or approved degradable options), under no

circumstances use to-go bags and polystyrene foam, only reusable tableware, and copy to

acceptable recycling operations. Additionally, restaurants are also required to decide on two or

more extra criteria, such as: performance in energy efficient and water conservation practices,

certified as sustainable or determined by Seafood Watch, there must always be vegan or

vegetarian food options, provide customers bringing in their reusable products a discount, and no

disposable plastic bottles (Surfrider Foundation, 2019).

Current Events

The incorporation of the issue involving restaurant sustainability can be considered an

environmental or economical movement. This type of movement supports solutions to issues

which are discussed in green politics. The United States began to gain more environmentalist in

the 1960’s because of exposed problems such as oil spills, pollution, side-effects of chemicals,
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and bomb testing. According to the Nielsen Company, three out of four customers that are

Generation Z and/or Millennial will pay for the more expensive sustainable option (Prigge,

2017).

Court Cases

In a case involving Ben and Jerry’s, reviewed by The Associated Press, the issue was

whether or not Ben and Jerry’s ice cream was in violation of consumer protection laws because

they misled the consumers to think their products are more environmentally friendly than they

actually are. The analysis and application resulted in finding that Ben and Jerry’s was guilty

because there was sufficient enough claims to believe that their cows contained no traces of

chemicals which was a false statement made by Ben and Jerry’s (The Associated Press, 2018).

Legal

As stated earlier, the current state of laws created by the government surrounding the

restaurant industry prevents the addition of new regulations enabling the protection of resource

waste. The government needs to add incentives to restaurants and companies that participate in

sustainable practices would encourage restaurants to reduce their environmental impact. There

currently has no regulations set to keep restaurant’s carbon footprint to a minimum. This poses a

problem for the future of our environment.

More Incentives

The federal government created federal tax incentives to promote the donation of food

from restaurants by providing an enhanced tax deduction to businesses that meet the donation

standards. The requirements for enhanced tax reductions on a restaurant are: donations must go

to people who are in need, can not receive services for donations, donations must go to a
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non-profit organization, donations must only be used as charity, written letter for proof from the

organization, and food has to fit the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Acts’s criteria.

This is what Tim Schram, who is the Grant Thorton’s state and local tax managing

director, had to say: ​“For companies looking to grow and cut costs, this is a great time to invest

in capital projects — such as retrofitting facilities or upgrading production equipment to achieve

zero carbon footprint — that foster sustainability.” ​Advantage over competitors, money saved,

and the green label combined with more federal tax incentives can easily lead to a path of more

sustainability in restaurants (Grand Thornton, 2017). Dine-in restaurants do not seem to need

incentives at the moment because they have their own customer base who want to live a

sustainable lifestyle. However, this does not mean all restaurants should not get incentives. The

United States will always have some companies that are not environmentally conscious and

environmental incentives would encourage them to be more sustainable.

State Bans

The polystyrene material, also known as styrofoam, is a multipurpose plastic which is

inexpensive causing restaurants to rely on this material. Styrofoam is made from a

petroleum-based plastic and can be recycled; however, many states and communities do not

allow it to be recycled. The reason for this is because styrofoam can be breakable and pollutes

the ecosystem. An example of a side effect from broken styrofoam can lead to both small

animals and aquatic life to consume it (Kinhal, 2019). NewYork City and D.C.ceased the usage

of styrofoam take out containers for these reasons (Romeo, 2018).

California has taken environmental protection more seriously than all other 49 states

(Davenport and Nagourney, 2017). The governor, Jerry Brown, signed off of a bill that applies
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only to dine-in restaurants. This is now a law that bans restaurants from giving straws to

customers when they are seated. The reasoning for this law is to reduce plastic waste that causes

the death of marine life. California was the only state to ban plastic straws during 2018 (Phorn,

2018).

Fragmented Regulatory System

Whether the seafood was purchased in a restaurant or a grocery, consumers are given

little information about it, such as where and when the seafood was harvested. Studies about the

mislabeling of seafood have come to light. A study has shown that seafood can be mislabeled

one-fourth to three-fourths of the time. Restaurants should be required to buy from sustainable

fisheries because it is not realistic to expect their customers to determine what they are

consuming. Mislabeling is driven by corrupt actions in order to either imitate an expensive

product, avoid tariffs for specific species. Seafood fraud allows unsustainable fishing able to

continue to be successful by creating an easy way to launder illegal seafood that was caught by

the fishermen. The efforts that are made in order to provide the consumer the sustainability of the

fish are useless when there is no regulation put on mislabeling. The government should require

the origins of the fish because this is one of the only ways restaurants are able to trust their fish

they are selling (Stiles, 2011). No single federal agency has been put in charge of preventing fish

fraud or monitoring sustainability in restaurants. It is left to multiple agencies of the federal

government. These federal agencies are not using their powers and are only fixing outdated laws

when they should be creating laws in order to protect the future of our Country (OCEANA,

2018).
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Conclusion

All in all, the addition of incentives for restaurants that participate in sustainable practices

would encourage restaurants to carry more organic and local food. It would also motivate

restaurants to keep their impact to a minimum by setting waste audit on the waste of food,

plastic, and water. Currently, it is the restaurant's decision on if they are going to become more

sustainable for the good of the environment. The United States government has no regulations

set to keep restaurant’s carbon footprint to a minimum. The regulations that should be put in

place and revised by the government are guidelines that restaurants can choose to follow and if

chosen they are able to receive federal tax incentives. Overall, there is a fragmented regulatory

system because there is no specific federal agency to force the application of organic or local

foods and to take control of the waste of food, plastic, and water. The current state of laws

created by the government surrounding the restaurant industry prevents the addition of new

regulations enabling the protection of resource waste.

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