Restaurant joins green team by composting food waste
November 4, 2008
By Administrator
Sweet Addition has gone green, but few customers have noticed the new addition to the popular restaurant and candy shop.
Sweet Addition head chef Lynn Rehn (left) and Christina Graham, district manager at Cedar Grove Recycling, take a break from composting training. Contributed
The small eatery in Gilman Village, which serves breakfast and lunch and devotes half of its space to a delectable selection of colorful candy, started a new composting program last month in an effort to help decrease its waste and environmental impact.
“We’re very excited,” head chef Lynn Rehn said. “It’s a cleaner way of working. It feels more productive.” The program started when the city’s Waste Management Department and Cedar Grove Composting approached Rehn and owner Jonelle Kowalsky. There are now three composting bins in the restaurant: in the kitchen, the dishwashing station and behind the front counter.
With training and support from Cedar Grove Composting, the main composting company in the Pacific Northwest, the staff was trained regarding what is compostable and how to get the most out of a composting program.
In order to compost restaurant waste, the staff puts all food scraps, including meat and dairy, coffee grounds, food-soiled paper and any other organic material into a composting bin that is picked up and taken to Cedar Grove for processing.
Rehn, who said she has composted since she was a child, hopes to inspire her customers to begin composting in their own homes. She also hopes to work with Cedar Grove to motivate other local restaurants to begin composting at their restaurants.
“One day I’ll be famous for my trash,” she said.
While the restaurant would like to be a role model for the community and other restaurants in the area, some customers are not quite as enthusiastic about seeing recycling and composting bins out for customer use.
“It has to do with the ambience,” customer Jo Bridges said.
Cara Blenz said she supports what the restaurant is trying to do, but also is unsure about what it might do to the character of the restaurant. When asked whether she would use the recycling and composting bins if they were available to customers, Blenz said “it would depend on if it was easy and hidden.”
Another concern for customers would be the increase in menu prices as the restaurant continues to go green.
Rehn said although compostable products do cost the restaurant more, she would like to expand the program further.
“In any way that we can afford to do it, we would like to,” she said
Kowalsky said she would not increase menu prices because of the composting program.
“Food is already very expensive,” she said.
Bridges said she would still come to the restaurant even if prices increased slightly.
“Food prices are going up anyway,” she said. “It’s a meeting place; it doesn’t make a difference if (you just eat there) occasionally.”
Kowalsky said she’s already seen a significant decrease in the amount of trash the restaurant produces and is happy with how the program is going so far.
“We’re putting good things back into the earth,” Rehn said. “It’s exciting.”
Monique Vague is a student in the University of Washington Department of Communication News Laboratory.
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I work in a supermarket chain/restaurant. We are looking to put bins at the buscart and kitchen area. Also at our deli where we have outdated ready to eat food items. Can you bive me any suggestions on what to use? Anything would be appreciated. We already recycle everything; but most of our tonnage from trash is from food waste Thanks Toni