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A restaurant with no leftovers (gastronomical games)

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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/01/busin...rants.html

EXCERPT: Garbage is inevitable in the restaurant and bar business. [...] At the Brooklyn natural wine bar and restaurant Rhodora, however, taking out the trash works a little differently. The new eatery is one of a handful of establishments in various cities that have begun to operate under a zero-waste ethos, meaning they do not send any trash or food waste that enters their business to a landfill. There is not even a traditional trash can on the premises. The aim is to lessen the restaurants’ environmental impact while running a profitable venture — with a possible added benefit of solidifying their eco-conscious bona fides among discerning clientele. Such radical idealism comes with challenges...

[...] A recent report from ReFED, a nonprofit organization focused on food waste reduction, found that restaurants in the United States generate about 11.4 million tons of food waste annually, or $25.1 billion in costs. The Environmental Protection Agency has reported that food waste and packaging account for nearly 45 percent of the materials sent to landfills in the United States.

The reason zero-waste “is not a mainstream concept [...] is because we’re just waking up to it,” said the chef Douglas McMaster, who runs the waste-free London restaurant Silo and advised the owners of Rhodora. “We’re just seeing the reality of wasting as much as we do.”

Mr. Rich and Halley Chambers, the deputy director of his Oberon restaurant group and co-owner of Rhodora, spent almost 10 months and $50,000 researching and transforming their Fort Greene space into a neighborhood joint that could operate without any trash pickup. Out went many of their regular vendors who wrapped deliveries in single-use plastic. In came tools to aid their waste-reduction efforts: a cardboard shredder to turn wine boxes into composting material, a dishwashing setup that converts salt into soap, beeswax wrap in lieu of plastic wrap.

“It’s not arcane secret knowledge,” Mr. Rich said. “It’s just a couple things that are very specific, and you need to kind of re-engineer how you think about” operating a restaurant or bar. Much of the planning time was spent searching for distributors and producers who could adhere to Rhodora’s mission... (MORE - details)
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