Personal Project: Literature Review Results

The "greening" of Anyetsang's Little Tibet...

I started off by looking for what has already been done at other restaurants and food-businesses by doing a literature review, and discovered that there is a great deal of literature on how to make the restaurant business more sustainable. In general, I was pleased to discover that Little Tibet already is doing much of what appears on the standard "sustainable-restaurant practices" checklists, but honestly, most of the "green" suggestions are just smart business practices. For example, Little Tibet already:

• Buys food in bulk whenever possible (thereby reducing packaging and shipping)
• Uses reusable table linens and dinnerware
• Uses reusable cloth cleaning towels (instead of paper)
• Uses multipurpose cleaners (and nontoxic ones, wherever possible)
• Prepares food to order (prevents over-production)
• Turns off all the lights in between the lunch and dinner shifts (saves electricity)

So, what needs to happen to make Little Tibet more sustainable?  RECYCLING. The National Restaurant Association recently published the results from its survey on recycling practices and attitudes towards recycling in the restaurant business, which indicates that "65 percent of restaurant operators embrace the practice of recycling and have recycling programs in place at their restaurants." However, this 65% includes restaurants that may recycle only some materials, and while some recycling is certainly better than none, I'm afraid that the majority of restaurants still dispose of a great deal of recyclables in their dumpsters.

Based on my review of the literature, it seems that the key factor that determines whether restaurants recycle or not is whether there is someone to remove the recyclables from their facilities in a timely fashion. Although restaurants are usually tight on space, sorting out recyclables from non-recyclables is doable- if you encourage the staff and can reduce the costs of waste disposal at the same time. However, many cities in the U.S. simply don't have recycling facilities or businesses that are able to pick up recyclables at a price that restaurants can afford to use.

Right now, Little Tibet contracts with Hoosier Disposal for their garbage collection (which happens once a month, for $115). This company does offer recycling services too, but the restaurant is hesitant to add on additional costs to their garbage pick up price. In order to determine if it would be beneficial to add recycling into their budget, I decided to contact other local restaurants that I know recycle and see how they go about their recycling. To read more about my field research on restaurants recycling in Bloomington, check out my other post: Personal Project: Field Research Findings.