The Consultant - Q1 2009 - (Page 60) It Ain’t Easy Being Green Food waste is collected in individual containers during prep and stored in large bins in the cooler for pick-up. Containers are recycled. The result is no garbage. Note that only recycling bins are lined up outside. goat cheese. The goats are given clean feed and browse on woodland undergrowth that is free of herbicides and pesticides. The milk is made into cheese right on the farm and animal waste goes right back to the land. Christian strives to purchase ingredients that have minimal processing as they are more nutritious and naturally flavorful. Food additives which have little or no nutritive value, and may even be unhealthy, are avoided at all cost. And as is always the case with foodservice, hygiene standards must be maintained to ensure consumer safety. Because food processing is costly, he has been able to reduce his end costs by cutting out the intermediate expenses and bringing the food straight from farm to table (via his kitchen of course!) Food miles track the distance that food travels from production to consumer, burning finite fossil fuels and polluting the environment along the way. Most U.S. food is shipped an average of 1500 miles before being sold and throughout the colder months these distances increase with imports from South America, Europe and Asia. Christian’s food mile audit resulted in some tough decisions. “Thai curry was one of my most popular dishes but coconut milk travels 10,028 miles to get to me. So I asked myself: do we really need it?” The answer is reflected in the lack of Thai curry on Greg Christian Catering’s menu. He acknowledges that he still has many items in his kitchen, particularly spices, that travel from afar but he continues to work to eliminate them, one jar at a time. When Christian looked at fair trade issues, he discovered that only 18 cents of every dollar at a retail food store goes to the grower; the rest is consumed by various middlemen. He strives to buy directly from the farmer, putting more in their pockets and more natural and seasonal food on his menu. This policy also helps to protect local production which can be threatened by low-priced produce from abroad; produce that may be grown by workers paid unfair wages, packed in additional packaging to arrive intact, with a high food mile count and generally of a hardier strain with less nutrition and taste. Not long ago Greg Christian Catering proudly announced that the kitchen and many of his on-site events are now “zero waste”, no small feat in a town where almost no recycling services are offered and composting is actually outlawed. “I realized I was sending 42 yards of waste into the earth every week,” says Christian. He found a partner in Chicago’s Resource Center, a non-profit environmental education organization whose mission is to promote and facilitate sustainability. Founder Ken Dunn has been farming since the 1940’s and began the Center in response to what he saw as a negative evolution away from natural farming. The Resource Center gladly agreed to collect most of the recyclables and compostibles from Christian’s kitchen. Plastic wrap was not on the accepted items list so he kept calling until he found a playground manufacturer who could take that too. Even the grease used for frying is picked up by a bio-diesel truck and reused for fuel. Christian found that breaking his staff of the “one big garbage bin” habit was a huge challenge. Indeed, throwing things away became an extra task, as items needed to be rinsed and cleaned according to the Resource Center’s specifications and then sorted into appropriate bins – aluminum and tin cans, cardboard and paper, plastic, grease and food waste. “It’s certainly not as easy as people think it is to separate garbage in the kitchen,” says Christian. So he moved the recycling bins outside so that staff would really have to think about what they were doing. “After only a few days, my staff caught on and now 60 theconsultant
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