Help with eco-friendly products

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Permalink Reply by larry esposito on June 6, 2008 at 12:35pm

sysco foods carries a whole line of eco friendly bio-degradable corn based products. check out the local rep near you or check out the sysco.com website.

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Permalink Reply by Tracy McMahon on June 6, 2008 at 1:38pm

Thanks Larry!

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Permalink Reply by Kim on June 7, 2008 at 8:55am

Sysco does carry quite a bit of products as well as UsFoods. I was attending WestEx in Denver last month the company Eco Products is the name that they carry. We will be using 100% sustainable products in the fall semester. The only complaint I have had was that the untensils were to short in the handle. They have fixed the problem. Also the other day I was thumbing through the Catersourse mag and there was alot out there for catering. Good Luck!
Kim

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Permalink Reply by Tracy McMahon on June 7, 2008 at 10:11am

Hi Kim. Thanks for the product name. I'll see if I can get a little farther with our local distributors.

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Permalink Reply by Kim on June 8, 2008 at 6:05pm

Your welcome. Let me know it all works out for you.
Kim

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Permalink Reply by Carl Muth on June 7, 2008 at 9:08am

Hi Tracy,

We are doing some things in Georgia with the Local, Sustainable and Green initiative here in Georgia. I have started a section on our website for Green Resources www.FoodServiceResource.com/Green. We have also created some Resources for the Georgia Restaurant Association. There is a section of Our Discussion Board called the Conservation Resource Center. If you are not a GRA Member, we will issue you a username and password for the GRA DB with "Guest Level" permissions. Click Here to request a UN & PW .

And finally, There is a new website for the Green Foodservice Alliance http://www.GreenFoodserviceAlliance.org. We are starting an email list to sign up for a newsletter that Sandra Cummins from www.SoutheastGreen.com will start publishing shortly. I haven't put up the request form yet, so if you are interested, let me know and I will add you to the list of names that she has already.

Carl Muth
404-545-5456
www.FoodServiceResource.com

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Permalink Reply by Doug Bond on June 7, 2008 at 11:01am

Tracy,
Give me an idea of the products, temperatures, and time increments that you want to solve for and I can steer you in the right direction. There are allot of products out there on the market right now, but nothing that is “all things for all applications”.
If you would rather “off-line” this, please forward me your contact information and we can discuss.
Doug

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Permalink Reply by Doug Bond on June 12, 2008 at 1:31pm

If the restaurant you are working with is switching from foam to anything else, then the price will be significantly more expensive. However, you can potentially reduce the cost by sourcing wisely.

In the "green" game there are 4 R's: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Rethink. Most people go straight to the "Recycle" one and skip all of the others. If you use all four "R's" you can source smartly.

- Reduce - reconfigure the packaging and bagging of the food items to reduce the amount of packaging material used. This requires some rethinking and retraining but it is worth it. You can also consolidate the number of SKU's of packaging you utilize to reduce the overall footprint of the packaging for the restaurant. Considering a packaging material that is lighter weight (thus less material) is also another option. Another easy option is "flat ware and service ware on demand only".

- Reuse - If the consumer base is up for it, consider putting reuse-able bags into place. For catering, consider utilizing all reusable containers that can be picked up once the event is done. I actually came up with an idea for a rotable service-ware program for a previous employer that could have been revolutionary (however the customers have to be on board). One easy one here (dependent on your in-house flatware quality) is to provide your customers with actual in-restaurant flatware instead of disposable.

- Recycle - Similar to the way the beverage industry helped to create and maintain recycling streams for their bottles, you could see what is most recycled in the area and utilize that type of material. The restaurant in question could even have a drop off site at or near their restaurant that could support this. One note, the "compostable" and "biodegradeable" products that are out on the market are just as bad as plastic and foam if they end up in a modern landfill. Modern landfills entomb everything and keep microorganisms, air and moisture (all things needed for bio-degradation) from everything in them. These products are only valuable if there is a disposal stream in the area that can properly handle them.

- Rethink- This one is the most difficult, yet the most impactful. It involves changing the mindset about disposables for the entire waste stream. This would include in restaurant waste as well as to go waste.

This is a weighty and often misunderstood topic that deserves more attention in our industry. If we do not create the solutions, the solutions will be dictated to us.

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