Green Options

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Trying to live a meat-free life is difficult when you have a decidedly carnivorous, culinarily-unadventurous husband.  Don’t get me wrong, my husband is down for meatless meals, but sometimes his less-than-ambitious palate gets tired of pasta (and I get tired of cooking the same “safe” flavor combinations).  Many nights we end up eating out, mainly because we don’t want to do the “What do you want to eat?” dance.  Even that can be difficult–he likes bar & grill-type places; I get sick of mushroom sandwiches or salads.  I’m emotionally exhausted just thinking about it.

So what’s a couple trying to eat well to do?  Here are five tips for eating out if you are a “mixed-eating” couple like my husband and me, after the jump.

Restaurants in seven cities across the US are part of the initial wave of the Food & Water Watch “Take Back the Tap“ Campaign.

“The consumer advocacy group is working with cities across the nation to urge local restaurants and chefs to sign a pledge to switch to serving only tap water, help educate customers about the benefits of tap over bottled water.”

Restaurants here in San Francisco open, and close, almost as often as the fog rolls in so we don’t usually pay an extreme amount of our precious attention to another restaurant du jour. Mixt Greens recently opened but they don’t qualify for new kid on the block status nonetheless they do deserve green props. Thus I direct my attention to their third installment of the Mixt Greens empire.

This third location, located in SoMa, just opened and used zero-VOC paints to improve the air quality, and I could definitely smell the food and not the fumes. They even used recycled paint to cover their ceiling. I didn’t find any bamboo or cork for the flooring but something better as they used an unfinished concrete floor with 50% flyash content. That high flyash content along with the fact that the floor will last a long time (plus it’s easy to clean) makes that choice a no-brainer.

So you’ve made the switch to reusable shopping bags, and you’re feeling pretty good about being able to answer the eternal grocery store question of “paper or plastic?” with a hearty “Neither!” But when you’re not doing the cooking at home, you probably don’t get a choice about avoiding much of the plastic packaging that keeps your food warm and safe on its journey from the restaurant to your home.

If you’ve ever felt a pang of guilt about how much garbage is created when ordering takeout, you’ve got good reason.  All those disposable containers and plastic bags made from petroleum create an environmental impact that goes on long after you’ve enjoyed the last of your Pad Thai leftovers. According to one report cited on Treehugger, over 1 million plastic bags are consumed in this country every minute. How many of those bags wind up in landfills after one use or, worse, end up wreaking havoc on marine life in the world’s oceans, is difficult to calculate. But it’s a trend that has been on a troubling upswing for a long time.  

To address this problem, an increasing number of restaurants and other food service providers have started to switch from petroleum-based plastic take-out items to compostable products made from renewable resources, such as corn (PLA) and sugar cane fiber (bagasse).  One of the major barriers that restaurants face when switching to such bio-based containers, however, is a painful difference in cost.

For example, restaurateur Dan Rosenthal who runs casual-Italian minichain Sopraffina Marketcaffe in Chicago found that he would pay a heavy price to replace the 400,000 non-biodegradable plastic bags he went through each year. The switch would entail 7 cents more per bag, for a total of $28,000 every year.

Living in San Francisco most of my life, I feel very spoiled by the amount of attention and high level of interest and support we have for the green movement.

Most recently, the City of San Francisco and partnership with non profit LightsOutSF.org has issued a "Lights Out" ordinance from 8:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. The city’s landmarks like Alcatraz, TransAmerica building, and parts of our lovely bridges will shut off their lights to announce the importance

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The Earth Tub

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