As the global stance on sustainability shows the flaws in society, a factor in our world’s debt towards Mother Nature is the tremendous amount of food waste, adding to the tons of trash covering our planet. According to EPA.gov, The total of solid waste in 2017 in America alone was 267.8 million tons. Of that, approximately 27 million tons were composted. However, it is unlikely that everyone paying rent or owning a home can have their own compost pile in their backyard.
On top of individual homes adding to the amount of waste, restaurants in the United States distribute 11.4 million tons of food waste annually, according to an reFED report. While restaurants handle a large amount of waste in their kitchens, some businesses are taking composting into their own hands with zero-waste shops.
Rhodora, an upscale wine bar in Brooklyn, New York, is one of the many facilities trying to lessen their waste. After opening the store in 2015, Rhodora’s mission, according to their website, was to be the first of its kind in being a 100 percent zero-waste wine bar. Since then, they’ve changed shipping brands numerous times until they found the best option of every source: a cardboard shredder to turn wine boxes into composting material, a dish washing setup that converts salt into soap, beeswax wrap as opposed to plastic wrap, paper menus, and composting all of the customers leftovers that they don’t wish to bring home. This restaurant doesn’t serve meat, since it is harder to compost, but does serve fish that is composted. Rhodora’s wine bottles are recycled and the corks are given to ReCork, a business which re-purposes corks to turn into yoga blocks and shoe soles.
When New York Times interviewed the Rhodora owners, they stated that when looking for vendors who were sustainable, one offered to remove the plastic wrap on their cheese before shipping it, by throwing the plastic in the trash, thus continuing the problem. While it does take research to find shipping methods that are zero-waste, other food services eliminating plastics from their brands are Zero, Planted Table and The Wally Shop.
While not everyone can eat every meal at Rhodora’s or afford these zero-waste brands, simple ways to eliminate single-use plastics and waste from your own kitchen is to shop with reusable bags, buy in bulk with glass or metal containers, purchase a water filter and drink from the tap rather than plastic bottles, purchase locally grown produce rather than pre-packaged, and save your leftovers if you can’t finish your meal. A zero-waste kitchen or restaurant may not solve the global waste crisis, but every step taken is a step in the direction towards a greener planet.
LThomps Art 