Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Green cuisine in the Roanoke Valley
Two Roanoke restaurants are striving to reduce their ecological footprint
Lindsey Nair
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Some restaurants will put corned beef and cabbage on the menu; others will squirt a little food coloring in the domestic drafts.
But this St. Patty's Day seems like an appropriate time to highlight how a few local restaurants are going "green" in a way that is perhaps less fun, but more meaningful: by reducing their impact on the environment.
Earlier this year, Fork in the Alley in South Roanoke became the second business in Southwest Virginia to join the Green Restaurant Association, a national nonprofit that helps restaurants establish environmental management systems.
The other member restaurant is Mabry Mill Restaurant on the Blue Ridge Parkway in Meadows of Dan.
Meanwhile, this marks the third year that Hotel Roanoke & Conference Center has partnered with the state Department of Environmental Quality to meet criteria for green businesses.
"Restaurants are major producers of trash and major users of toxic chemicals," said Michael Oshman, founder and director of the Green Restaurant Association in Boston. "It is an industry that, like all, needs to make improvements."
How to be green
If you think your household produces a lot of trash, just picture the number of cardboard boxes, glass bottles, plastic jugs and aluminum cans that go into restaurant trash containers across the country every day.
Add to that the water that restaurants run, the electricity they use and the Styrofoam containers that go out the door, and you've got one heck of a big ecological footprint.
That's why Oshman founded the GRA in 1990. Since then, some 150 restaurants in the United States have joined the association, which just about doubled its numbers in the past year alone.
The GRA offers two-, three- and five-year consulting plans to restaurants, and Fork in the Alley decided to sign up for the longest term. Owner David Trinkle, who is also a Roanoke city councilman, said the restaurant paid just under $5,000 for GRA services.
Fork in the Alley bartender Jon Roberts puts together a take away box for a patron.
Fork in the Alley is the second Green Restaurant in Virginia, meaning it has eliminated styrofoam containers, installed automatic hand dryers and lights in the bathroom, and has certified energy-efficient appliances.
A stack of environmentally friendly takeout boxes used at Fork in the Alley.
Photos by Jared Soares | The Roanoke Times
"Out of the gate, we had to accomplish four steps and then over the next five years, we have to accomplish four per year," Trinkle said.
The first four steps: Replace Styrofoam containers with a biodegradable version, replace paper towels with high-powered air dryers in the bathrooms, install motion-activated lights in the bathrooms and start a recycling program.
Plans include replacing any appliances that are not energy efficient, replacing light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs and buying organic produce and green cleaning products.
Mabry Mill Restaurant, which is owned by Forever Resorts, has been a member of the GRA since 2004, according to company spokeswoman Darla Cook.
Cook said all of Forever Resorts' 65 vacation properties are green.
"From our experience," she said, "the training of staff has always been a key element in implementing an environmental management system."
At Fork in the Alley, they worried that separating recyclables would put a wrinkle in the work flow, but with the city's cooperation, it has been simple.
"With daily pickup, it has really been a pretty easy thing," Trinkle said. "The alley side of the restaurant is actually a lot cleaner because we are recycling."
If all goes well, Trinkle said, other area restaurants will join the GRA or at least take up recycling. And he hopes that with everyone campaigning together, they can bring back colored-glass recycling in the city.
"The volume of colored glass that comes out of our little restaurant is staggering," he said.
Trinkle and other restaurateurs estimate that 80 percent to 90 percent of the glass waste they produce is colored.
Skip Decker, the solid waste manager for Roanoke, said only a handful of city restaurants recycle and many just recycle cardboard, not aluminum, glass or plastic.
"We are working diligently right now to try and find a source for colored glass," he said. "If that happens, I think we will have more restaurants coming on board with us."
Todd Lancaster, owner of Awful Arthur's in downtown Roanoke, said the biggest obstacles for some restaurants to recycle is storage and time.
"You've got to have double the storage," said Lancaster, who is recycling cardboard. "Then the problem becomes training the bartenders. Friday night, they are trying to make money and make me money. Are they going to remember to separate that brown bottle from the green bottle?"
Still, Lancaster said that with a little guidance, he would be willing to put a recycling program into place. And he thinks other local business owners would follow suit.
A community effort
Over at the Hotel Roanoke, the staff is working with Virginia Green, a partnership program between the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, Virginia Tourism Corp. and the Virginia Hospitality and Travel Association.
Although Virginia Green offers guidance to businesses, the free program is voluntary and certification is self-administered.
Lodging facilities were the first group recruited into the program, but the Hotel Roanoke was already ahead of the game. Now, they've created a green committee, which meets on a regular basis to discuss new steps they can take.
At a meeting last week, Executive Chef Billie Raper strategized with two special guests about how to compost kitchen scraps.
The guests were Tenley Weaver and Dennis Dove, who own Full Circle Farm in Floyd County and do the marketing for a larger cooperative of growers called Good Food, Good People.
Good Food -- Good People supplies locally grown and raised food to stores and restaurants throughout Southwest Virginia. Raper wants to give them some 1,000 pounds of vegetable and fruit peelings, egg shells, coffee grounds and other compostable materials each week.
Weaver and Dove have such a huge compost pile on their farm that Dove has to turn it with a backhoe.
"This stuff is so rich and so valuable once it melts down," Weaver said as she examined 50 pounds of pineapple peels. "It's a crime to put it in a landfill."
Composting is just the latest step for the hotel in its quest to be green. The management has already addressed water and energy efficiency, chemical toxicity and other issues.
They even spent $10,000 to revive an old well that now provides almost all the water they use for landscaping. And they're toying with the idea of putting a live plant in every hotel room.
"This committee is here to look at those things and talk about ideas and take it back to the management," Raper said.
Tom Griffin, program director for Virginia Green, said they will soon shift recruiting efforts to restaurants. He said one other local restaurant, Blackwater Cafe at Smith Mountain Lake, is working on going green.
Griffin and Oshman, the GRA director, agree that one of the biggest benefits of the green movement is the resulting positive publicity.
Diners concerned about the environment need only visit the GRA Web site or the DEQ Web site to find businesses that share their mission.
And if you want to get involved, Trinkle said, you can start by riding your bicycle to the restaurant anytime during May, which is National Bike Month.
Not only will you save fuel, but you'll also get 10 percent off your meal.
"It's all worthwhile and within the scheme of this restaurant," Trinkle said of their efforts. "We just want to make it a feel-good place for people to work in and for people to visit and have a meal in."
On the Net: www.deq.virginia.gov/ www.dinegreen.com
Would you be more likely to dine somewhere if it was green? Talk about it on the Fridge Magnet blog.
