By Paul Smith •
September 11, 2008
There are many ways for restaurants to go green, and nearly as many for them to be certified as a green restaurant. Which way to go? What’s the most useful? Which is valid? Between the numerous regional and national options out there, it can be overwhelming.
What if there was a program that made it simple, was free, modeled after and qualifying you for LEED credits, rewarded you for progress made along the way, and had all the equipment and supplies necessary to qualify available to you through them? Such a program exists, the Certified Green Commercial Kitchen program, through the national restaurant supply company Food Service Warehouse.
Now you may say, is this just a ploy for you to buy their products? Hardly. There’s no requirement that you buy through them to get certified. Though their prices do seem good. And in fact, they have a contest running now, open to any commercial kitchen, where you could win an entire green kitchen, from the oven to the ice machine, with $1000 worth of bio based disposables in there for good measure. Entry details can be found here.
Now what of the program itself? It’s broken down into 5 areas, of which you must accrue a certain amount of points of the total available, similar to how LEED works, in order to qualify in that area. When you do, you get rewarded.
And they’re not paltry rewards, either.
When I decided to start my own business, I knew that I wanted it to be green. Of course, my definition of green could be quite different from everyone else’s. There are varying shades of green, which makes it very difficult to quantify or define. Perhaps this is why there are so many different green certifications, seals, labels, and standards out there. With the dizzying array of options for green and sustainable certification available, it’s hard for a business owner to decide which certifier to use or if it’s even worth bothering at all.
Since I’m trying to start a graphic design studio, I started by searching for a green certification agency that specialized in creative services. It seems that many of the certifiers lack standards for service-based businesses, as most focus on products. The only design specific green “certification” that I found was the Design Can Change Pledge, a voluntary pledge for designers who commit to move towards sustainable practices. The site includes many ideas for going green as well as a great introduction to what sustainability in graphic design means, but doesn’t offer certification for green design businesses. As of yet, there’s no LEED for the graphic design industry.
