Business Section Going Green The Process of Going Green The Process of Going Green Have your say  Read comments Written by Christine St. Pierre   Friday, 02 May 2008 12:03    The Process of Going Green Achieving green certification takes time, but it’s by no means impossible. Making a restaurant of any size “green” could be a daunting task if you try changing everything at once. But with some help from experts, it can be done fairly painlessly. Mark Sapienza, executive chef of the Langham Hotel in Boston, sought advice from the Green Restaurant Association and the historic property was officially certified green in June 2007. After an assessment from the GRA, Sapienza was given suggestions about what to change and how to get started. To be certified green from the GRA, a restaurant must achieve four initiatives in its first year and then an additional four each year to remain certified. Sapienza ultimately accomplished five in his first year. How it Started “I’m sure it’s easier to conform to the protocols in a newer building,” Sapienza explained. “Being an older, historic property, we had to work out the logistics like where to keep recycling. Obviously, it wasn’t planned in the initial footprint of the kitchen, so it took a little time to get it working.” Cardboard recycling was one initiative and it needed to be collected from kitchen, as well as the entire hotel. “We had to train staff to bring boxes to certain areas and teach them how to break them down to save room,” he noted. Stopping to do this adds up to three hours a day of additional work for the steward department. Another initiative was to recycle plastic and glass, so 30-gallon barrels were added near the kitchen to collect these. Each are picked up a few times a week. In order to accomplish the third initiative, Sapienza reached out to his purveyors and requested that nothing be brought into the hotel in Styrofoam, and it has now been eliminated from the hotel, including no Styrofoam to-go containers. He explained that items now arrive in plastic or waxed cardboard. “They understand that we buy millions of dollars of food from them a year, so they’ll listen,” he said. “A lot of our purveyors are embracing this too, even coming out with their own lines of containers.” The kitchen now utilizes low-flow water for the automatic dishwashing system, which provides a good savings for the hotel. And it wasn’t necessary to purchase new dishwashing equipment, he added. Though they reached the goal of four initiatives in their first year, Sapienza and his team switched to organic, trade friendly coffee. Jim’s Organic Coffee from West Wareham, Mass., is now used throughout the hotel and restaurants, and he stressed, “It’s just a superior coffee.” Future Goals The GRA came to Sapienza a few months ago to discuss the next four initiatives needed to remain certified green. He was given eight suggestions and again decided on four. Low-flow water facuets will be utilized throughout the kitchen. “We’ll still need a few highpowered hoses, but low-flow shouldn’t make a difference in cleaning and handwashing,” he stated. “Any percentage of this we can support is better than none at all.” He expects that paper recycling will be easier, as it’s added to the glass and plastic recycling container and sorted by the waste company. Biodegradeable to-go containers and chlorine-free paper products will round out their initiatives for 2008. “We picked these because we knew we can definitely handle them,” Sapienza stated. “We also want to try composting. And the GRA asked us to have a wine list that’s 25% organic.” In order to get the staff involved, and even excited, about going green, Sapienza explained that they did a lot of inhouse training. “We showed everyone how long it takes for things to decompose, and this was very enlightening for people.” And he finds himself doing more to be environmentally friendly, even if it’s not one of his initiatives. The Sunday brunch was reinvented with new equipment and aluminum tables with a shiny copper finish, which eliminates the need for table linens. For tables that need skirting, they’re now using one that tapers in so food isn’t spilled on it, cutting down on the laundering and saving water. Though Sapienza does at least 600 covers a day, and more during the holidays, he explains that being green is all part of their package. “This has become a culture here at the hotel, and it was surprisingly easy to get it done,” he emphasized. So by choosing four initiatives a year and some buy-in from your staff, going green may not be as difficult to achieve as you thought. And in the end, everyone wins. Comments Add New Search RSS Write comment Name: Email:  do not notify if new postnotify if new post Title: UBBCode:         -color-aquablackbluefuchsiagraygreenlimemaroonnavyolivepurpleredsilvertealwhiteyellow -size-tinysmallmediumlargehuge   Please input the anti-spam code that you can read in the image. Last Updated ( Friday, 02 May 2008 15:20 )