'Green' restaurants not all that green

Bhagyashree Garekar, Straits Times 13 Dec 09;

Washington - Al Gore likes to walk in with his daughter. The Clintons drop in now and then. 'We are waiting for the Obamas,' says Ms Nora Pouillon with the confidence that becomes the chef and proprietress of America's first and the capital's only true-blue organic restaurant.

As a conscientious guardian of that label, Ms Pouillon does daily what most restaurants do four times a year - change her menu. She is legally bound to feature what is seasonal, fresh and at hand. At this time of the year, root vegetables are plentiful, so turnips, parsnips and carrots are on her recycled paper menus. Asparagus, a spring vegetable, is banned from the kitchen for now. If it is the weekend, duck is on. Maybe scallops and crabs. Steaks and ribs are regulars.

In a year when the world is the closest it has ever come to a global pact on curbing climate change, the fervour for a low-carb - as in low-carbon - diet is growing. Restaurants that call themselves 'green' and offer eco-friendly menus are sought after and springing up to fill the gap. Under House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's Green the Capitol project, the Congress cafeteria includes sustainable seafood and organic, locally grown produce. Served on compostable plates with cutlery to match.

Still, a truly green restaurant is the stuff of myths. Many claimants have but a limited range of sustainably produced offerings, and often what is advertised as 'green' has dubious credentials.

Restaurant Nora comes fairly close to the ideal. For starters, its organic�fruits, vegetables, meats, coffee, chocolate, salt and sugar all come from producers who�do not use synthetic fertilisers, pesticides, antibiotics or hormones which harm the environment.

Water flows from taps with filters, not ecologically unfriendly plastic bottles. Carpets are recycled. The paint on the walls is non-toxic; termite control is through approved organic chemicals. Dishes are washed in bio-degradable detergents. Waiters wear organic clothing, and the laundry is done on the premises for fear that outsourcing it may bring in uninvited showers of non-organic chemicals.

'Where I don't squeeze is electricity,' says Ms Pouillon. 'I have museum-quality antique Amish quilts on the walls, and we like to project that, so we don't do dim-wattage bulbs.'

To be greener, should she not eschew oranges from Florida or pay for their haulage in carbon offsets? And should she not feature only a little meat, for is that not more energy-intensive to produce than vegetables? She agrees, but adds that any portion of animal protein served in her restaurant comes with at least three vegetable portions.

And vegetarian choices are plentiful on the menu. A diner can, in other words, customise his degree of green. Ms Pouillon has been ahead of the game and is ready to meet him more than halfway.

'When I applied for certification 12 years ago, they had to invent the rules and the standards for certifying restaurants as organic. It took them two years to do that, and I got my label in 1999,' she says.

Since then, she has opened up her doors and books, year after year, to inspectors from Oregon Tilth, a non-profit�organic certifier in the United States. What that process�guarantees is that at least 95 per cent of all the food served is organic, with the US Department of Agriculture defining what constitutes organic produce. Those are stringent criteria to meet, and it is no wonder that hers is among just four or five certified organic restaurants in all of the US.

'It is difficult, the trouble I have to take to source my supplies, plan my menu,' she says.

Much less of a science is green certification of restaurants, which would mean it serves only what is locally and sustainably produced in order to minimise global warming-causing carbon emissions in the transport, storage, refrigeration and waste disposal processes involved. For now, there are no universal definitions, no industry or government standards for what makes a restaurant green.

And when it comes to it, is it only the food that has to be green for a restaurant to be so described? Must not the backend restaurant practices also be so? Is it reasonable to expect that a green restaurant is efficient in its use of energy, has eco-friendly waste disposal practices and packs food in biodegradable containers?

And how far is it the responsibility of the restaurant to verify how green its suppliers really are, given that there are no standard definitions of what constitutes green farming practices either?

Thus, for instance, when the menu says the produce was sourced from a family farm, it may conjure up the vision of a small, non-polluting farmstead. But by some definitions, family farms include multi-million-dollar businesses that are run off thousands of acres. They can be as polluting as factory farms that foul the air with methane and the water with poor waste management practices.

Animals could be mainly fed corn that�requires large amounts of fertiliser and pesticides, both of which are manufactured from fossil fuels. And eating corn increases cattle's methane emissions from flatulence because these animals did not evolve to subsist on it.

The reality, at least here and now, is that most restaurants that claim to be green are only somewhat so. But that is better than nothing.