For local restaurants, green initiatives are just smart business: Andrew Coppolino

Change has to be both internal and external when addressing environmental and climate issues in the kitchens of the 92-roomWalper Hotel,Rick Knapp says.

"Something that is really important to us is waste reduction, recycling and proper composting," Knapp, the hotel's general manager, said in an interview. "They can be challenging with the current systems in place and how we're doing things."

Solutions, he adds, need to be found with outside agencies as well as the kitchen team.

"It's about making the system work in-house and making sure that when you're separating compost it doesn't get contaminated with plastics, for instance, so we're properly reducing waste as we want to," he said.

Reducing trips to landfill and reducing greenhouse gas emissions are front-of-mind for just about everyone, including restaurateurs, on the eve of the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, that gets underway this weekendthat aims to accelerate actions needed to address climate change.

Restaurants and food-service operations, like that of the Walper Hotel, are taking steps despite the year of the pandemic and in some cases because of it.

Nicole Hunt, executive chef at the Walper, has built relationships with local producers, which she says means less travel and helps the local economy.

"It helps us not only know where our food comes from but how it's made," Hunt said. "These relationships reduce our food miles, which is something we should all be paying more attention to."

Keeping environment in mind

Like the farmer-chef relationship, the initiatives are not necessarily new. Restaurants have always had to be lean and reduce waste of all kinds in order to be profitable. In 2007, when it was being built, Wildcraft Grill and Longbar in Waterloo was already looking ahead.

"We opened with the environment in mind. Our HVAC system pulls pollutants out of the kitchen with hot air going through a heat exchanger and pre-heats incoming air so we use less energy. And we installed LED technology of the time to reduce power output. With renovations in 2018, we switched entirely to LEDs," said Jason Ernst, a Wildcraft manager.

While Wildcraft is part of a large, local restaurant group, smaller restaurants are similarly looking forward to returning to more environmental responsibility again.

Dan McCowan, chef-owner at Red House in Waterloo, says little things add up, including proper composting and sorting of garbageand initiatives such as converting to paper straws and digital menus.

"It's an evolution to build new habits," McCowan said. "Now is a huge time to put some focus on it because one of the by-products of Covid-19 was to go to disposable everything."

During the pandemic, Red House switched to take-out containers that customers can wash and re-use many times.

A local company, Ekko whose tag line is "reduce, reuse, rethink" has been working with area restaurants on adopting their re-useable containers. As COVID-19 subsides and restaurants become more stable, Ekko co-owner Chloe Kruis says the industry can evolve.

"For most restaurants, it's operational. It's finding time, it's training staff and it's logistics," she says of potential improvements.

Refuse to use some common items

While he is currently a one-person operation, Kitchener-based Thompson Tran is an early adopter of sustainability in food service. He calls his Wooden Boat Food Company a "circular green economy" that takes "incremental steps" focusing on doing one thing over 10 days, rather than trying to change 10 things in one day.

"The 'R' that is missing from reduce, reuse, recycle is refuse. At the end of the day, that's the step that we've taken," he says.

Wooden Boat has refused to use plastic wrap, parchment paper and aluminum foil, and is virtually zero-waste. Tran says relying on local and hyper-local producers, including farmers using regenerative agriculture, for supplies reduces emissions generated by transportation.

In a challenge to received wisdom, Tran says restaurants and in fact all Canadians "shouldn't feel good" about recycling.

"Our waste, whether compostable, recyclable, biodegradable, or just pure garbage, only nine per cent of it actually gets recycled," he said.

Zero waste kitchens

Restaurants generally bring in whole ingredients, break them down into portions and cook them to make a variety of foods: it's critical that they reduce food waste that costs them money and traditionally ends up in landfill,which decomposes into organic waste producing methane, a greenhouse gas.

More and more awareness about food waste has led to reduction initiatives at both large and small operations: Wildcraft and Charcoal Group have started their own in-house pilot program to boost recycling and composting of waste that could eventually stretch across the company brands.

"We're doing zero waste in the kitchen. We have compost containers and recycling bins at each station, including compostable portion bags so that if something spoils, plastic doesn't go to landfill," Ernst says.

Bits of veg scraps go into making stock, a centuries-old restaurant strategy, and Ernst adds that sliced fruit which many diners don't eat and which usually gets binned is dehydrated for garnishes and less waste.

"The ends of the orange that don't go into a drink are dehydrated and get crushed into dust for a plate garnish," he said.

At Knife and Pestle Kitchener, trim from salmon that can't be used for sushi is used in other dishes, including the skin, which is deep-fried as a crispy, tasty garnish.

A few years ago, Borealis Grille in Guelph and Kitchener calculated that food waste by customers amounted to roughly 215,000 kilograms annually between the Neighbourhood Group of Restaurants: the company cut back on bread service and condiments like ketchup unless specifically requested by diners.

"Prior to the pandemic, we were freezing food-prep waste and a farmer was coming to pick up scraps to feed their chickens, pigs and goats," says Court Desautels of Borealis and their efforts to eliminate what goes to landfill.

These are seemingly small steps, but for Tran, such incremental change must continue in order to reduce emissions and our carbon footprint in the restaurant industry and elsewhere, he says.

"If many of us are doing small things, that's going to have a larger impact than one multi-million-dollar national initiative doing one big thing," he said.

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