Sustainable restaurants - myth or reality?

Associating food with environment usually takes one of three avenues:

• Local production and consumption. - The notion underlying the 100 Mile Diet and other similar ideas is that when we consume food that is locally produced we also reduce our ecological footprint by minimizing transportation effects (e.g. carbon emissions from air freight) and other externalities.
  
• Food security.- Closely associated with the previous item, the idea of food security is also associated to the availability of land (or lack thereof) and the varied uses this land can have. Ensuring that we protect enough land and designate it as are able to grow crops for human consumption is part of the food security debate.
• Greening restaurants.- This idea arises from an understanding that food production does have environmental impacts, and that we can minimize those impacts through rational decision-making. The idea of 'sustainable restaurants' may sound counter-intuitive, but it is not that strange. The remainder of this post will describe a couple of ideas I discussed with Jason Antony from Green Table, a Vancouver-based group dedicated to greening restaurants.

Jason and I had a nice chat where we discussed the two basic pathways that Green Table is championing. The first is "greening restaurants" - that is, reducing the environmental impact your current food operation has. The second is "sustainable restaurants" - this idea is related to being the leaders of sustainability in the restaurant business. For example, if you are a small Indian food kind of hole-in-the-wall, maybe you'll want to switch from styrofoam containers to recyclable ones. Or maybe you'll increase the post-consumer recycled content (paper, plastic containers, etc.) of your operations.

Now, if you want to be at the forefront of sustainable restaurants, you may want to engage in a full-fledged green marketing campaign, and include a full in-depth analysis of your operations so that you can find ways in which your restaurant can meet high standards of sustainability.

Green Table also promotes an eco-labelling system (for participating members of the network). Their philosophy can be found here. I think this is an excellent idea and I look forward to knowing more about this!

Kick-off post to Blog Action Day

Don't know how I managed to not appear on the Blog Action Day list given that I had previously registered and blogged about it (see my post here) so I re-registered. Had mixed feelings regarding whether I should post anything during the early hours of the morning, given that I wanted to give my analysis of the roles of Al Gore and the IPCC in bringing climate change to the forefront of global discussions a little bit of visibility. But... since I've already committed to Blog Action Day, I will be ok if my little post doesn't get that much exposure.

So on the menu today (if I manage to get all my work done)...

• Green restaurants - Had a nice chat with Jason Antony of Green Table, so I'll discuss some stuff that we talked about.
  
• The linkages between poverty, urban sprawl and sustainability.
• Numbers, numbers and more numbers (or how people can fool you with statistics).
• Research that is being undertaken in Vancouver.
• Upcoming events on sustainability.

And for now, I have to get back to my 'day job' so I hope you all are enjoying Blog Action Day. Go to their website to see who else is participating. And if you're a Vancouver blogger and are participating, let me know and I'll link to your website.

Upcoming Event - Blog Action Day - Oct 15, 2007

So a few months ago, I came across Blog Action Day. I think it was through Darren Barefoot's blog. At any rate, this is the 411 on Blog Action Day, from their own website:

Blog Action Day -- On October 15th, bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind. In 2007 the issue is the environment. Every blogger will post about the environment in their own way and relating to their own topic. Our aim is to get everyone talking towards a better future.

The whole idea behind Blog Action Day is pretty neat. And since my specialty is environmental issues (and the title of my blog is 'Random Thoughts of a Student of the Environment'), it's kind of intuitive that I'll be blogging about the environment. I plan to write about issues that I haven't talked about in previous posts (such as energy, e-waste, green weddings, etc.) and hopefully will come up with other ideas.

It will not be exactly like Blogathon 2007, where I had to post every 30 minutes for 24 hours. Both Rebecca @ Miss604 and yours truly did Blogathon this past July, and I am not about to repeat the experience. It was painful! But it was lots of fun and many people donated to my cause. Nevertheless, this is a one-in-a-lifetime kind of blogathon ;)

However, this next October 15th, every post I will write will be dedicated to environmental issues. If everything goes according to plan and I manage to get all my work done, I'll be blogging about once an hour for about 12 hours, but can't promise I'll have the energy to do so. At any rate, if you are a blogger, I encourage you to sign on. And if you're a reader, I encourage you to leave a comment on this (or any of my future posts) with ideas for blog posts, commentary, whatever.

One small caveat though - all comments in my blog are moderated, so if you post and it doesn't appear, then it's probably awaiting moderation!