Greening the Restaurant Industry
Note: Scroll to the bottom to find out about the new Green Kitchen Certification offered by
Food Service Warehouse
Dear Readers,
Some of you have inquired about how I’ve been spending my time since wrapping up production (and living) on the Sust Enable project at the end of July. As I wrote in my post “Voyage to the Center of the United States,” my August was spent travelling the country, experiencing its still awe-inspiring natural beauty.
Since mid-September, I have taken work waitressing nearly full time at a restaurant. And no, that isn’t sustainable.
Sust Enable, my three month foray of 100% sustainable living, taught me a lot of things. The first thing I noticed after the project concluded is that I was hopelessly broke. Trying to innovate a radical new eco-conscious way of living doesn’t pay… rather, it sapped money, as I watched my planned resources for feeding and housing myself in a “100% sustainable” way fall through.
Partly, I am okay that the Sust Enable project didn’t pay me at all–it was an educational experience to
me about how money works from an outsider’s perspective. On the other hand, I was teetering near the brink of not being able to provide for myself–literally! As much as I loathe the fact, nearly all systems for providing for one’s basic needs exist within the money-exchange system. The ones outside of such a system and potentially sustainable, as I learned, are either insufficient, unavailable, or sabotaged at every possible opportunity by the capitalist system–by business owners, managers, policies, laws.
So, come September, I decided I really would like a place to myself. I really would like to be warmed in freezing weather. I really would like to have food readily accessible to me. Basic ideas, no? Certainly, each of these systems in their current states are unsustainable in terms of the environment. But at the very least, I now have a perspective on how that might be different in the future, and can hopefully work to create a society that doesn’t have to trade the health of our air or water for our immediate stability and livelihood.
Working as a server in a restaurant has been a difficult situation for me. I know I need the money… but holding that thought aloft every day above a sea of swirling, conflicting passions has been challenging. I watch perfectly good food go uneaten and thrown out–but paid for–because of the sentiments that day of the purchaser. 
I see inordinate amounts of cruel and unsustainably-harvested meat–from steak to seafood–served with enhancing garnishes on plates to carefree consumers, who will never feel or see the horrors of a meatpacking factory. Money accounts for all. I see servers, some of the hardest working people I have ever met, go untipped (our main source of income) by a table of cheerful business people. But most of all, I see a continuous flow of garbage–paper, plastic, glass, and food–into the trash bins.
