FESmag

Amelia Levin

How to Go Green
May 22, 2008

With all the information circling about "going green" out there, it’s easy for operators and everyone else in the foodservice industry to experience confusion about what steps to take to create or improve upon sustainable business practices, and do so in a cost-effective way.

Here’s where Kendall College comes in. The college became the first culinary school to operate a certified green restaurant, which in this case, is its dining room open to the public. 

As part of this sustainability education initiative, Culinary Arts Dean Chris Koetke teamed up with Michael Oshman, executive director of the Green Restaurant Association, to present a video during the National Restaurant Show in Chicago last weekend outlining several steps operators can take to introduce more environmentally friendly practices in their operation. 

To watch the video, visit Kendall College’s homepage, and click on the link to the “Sustainability for the Food Service Industry” video.

Some of these general “green” steps operators can take include simple measures such as replacing standard light bulbs with more energy-efficient ones, to more complex but rewarding programs like creating composting programs. For Kendall College, this has involved having the students and faculty throw food scraps and biodegradable materials into green bins throughout the kitchens (some recyclable plastic and glass go into the blue recycling bins). A third-party composting vendor then picks up the green bins and transforms the matter into reusable soil for the school’s garden, and even other farms in Illinois. 

As a culinary arts student at the college, I can say from my perspective, throwing food scraps, paper, egg shells and other items into one green bin while in class is no more difficult than simply throwing the stuff into trash bins. Now that the warm weather has finally, albeit slowly, come through the Windy City, the other day I took a little stroll along the Chicago riverbank just in front of the college. I got to admire the gardens and see how far along the tomatoes, squash and other produce have come. I plucked a few herbs to taste, some sorrel and some chervil, smelled the mint and frankly enjoyed the nature around me considering I live in the urban jungle downtown. 

I was thankful that this beautiful garden had been made possible by the fertile soil created out of the food scraps I throw into those green bins. It was pretty cool to actually see sustainability “in action,” if you will. And, although it took several months for the college to implement the composting program because of earlier problems with wafting smells throughout the school (yuck), the program really couldn’t run more smoothly now. Koetke says the college is even starting to see a return on investment from the reduced waste, aided by the fact that the college also switched from using plastic tasting spoons to metal, reusable spoons. 

Dean Koetke will be speaking more on the subject of sustainability, and about Kendall College’s composting at FCSI Super Regional events across the country this year. For a schedule and description of these events, click here.

Posted by Amelia Levin on May 22, 2008 | Comments (0)