
A Restaurant with No Leftovers - vo2maxer
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/01/business/zero-waste-restaurants.html
======
dangus
A lower climate impact is almost like a luxury item. Sure, a fancy expensive
restaurant can afford to do this, and the best part for them is that the whole
thing can be sold as part of the dining experience.

That’s not exactly a solution to the dives and street food joints that
couldn’t operate without some form of disposable containers or cutlery. And
more importantly, that’s not a solution to the _customers_ of those dives that
can’t afford anything more expensive.

On the other hand, I imagine that a portion of waste reduction can simply be a
change in habits and doesn’t necessarily cost anything.

I was once trying to explain this sort of idea to a climate change denying
acquaintance. I said, forget the environment or the turtles, even if you don’t
believe this is harming our environment, why are we using these devices
designed to be immediately thrown away? Why do you need a straw with your
water/soda but not with your beer? Where does that habit come from?

~~~
nordsieck
> why are we using these devices designed to be immediately thrown away?

I mean, the answer is pretty easy: people have a strong preference for options
that help reduce their cognitive load.

People prefer restaurants that provide take out containers rather than require
they bring Tupperware.

People prefer grocery stores that provide bags rather than require they bring
their own.

This isn't true of everyone - conscientiousness is normally distributed - but
it is true for most people most of the time.

~~~
beerandt
At the risk of... whatever:

Disposable items (properly disposed of, ie landfilled) can be, and often are,
_more_ environmentally friendly than reusable items. Especially if you look at
actual real life use, as opposed to projected or design use.

Look at a UK LCA of shopping bags:

A cotton tote needs to be reused ~173 times _without being washed_ to break
even with the efficiency of a single use HDPE bag. (Edit: other alternatives,
like LDPE, paper or woven plastic, are also listed as low as multiplier of 2x
vs HDPE. I didn't intend to mislead.)

If you're not doing a whole load of dishes, it can be more efficient to use
plastic or paper plates for a meal, and trash them. The cost of just washing
something can be relatively and unreasonably high, environmentally speaking.

The green movement has been over reliant on emotional programming (reuse =
always good, plastic = always bad, etc) and needs to invest more in actual
education. Landfills have gotten an especially unearned negative connotation.

Hopefully the new generation of college graduates are getting proper training
in conducting proper Life Cycle Analysis'.

Not saying reuse is always bad or that we shouldn't be analysing these things,
just that they need analysis, and not a collective gut reaction.

[https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...](https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/291023/scho0711buan-
e-e.pdf)

~~~
nradov
Banning single use plastic bags is more about reducing litter and water
contamination than about energy efficiency. Lightweight plastic bags are
particularly bad because the wind blows them everywhere and they often end up
in oceans or rivers. This causes serious harm to aquatic environments.

~~~
beerandt
Yes, and that's fine, but it's also somewhat a different problem. One that is
better solved with a deposit scheme, redesign, or some other method than tax
and ban. (Edit: or the obvious- using biodegradable additives in HDPE at a
marginal cost.)

Make them twice as thick. Melt a weight into the seam of each one to prevent
flying and floating. You'd still be a magnitude ahead of the alternatives.
There are alternatives besides banning.

They have their problems, but people don't realize what a damn miracle of
engineering HDPE bags are. And other disposable paper and plastic items, to a
lesser extent.

~~~
sdenton4
I disagree that it's a different problem. There's a branch of corporate
environmentalism that says, hey, look, green things are great when they reduce
costs. LEED certified buildings reduce energy costs, for example, so everyone
is down for building and occupying them. It's great, because it's a win win,
but it's not at all the whole story.

Plastic bags in the ocean are an externality, whose cost is hard to measure
but is paid in the lives of wild things. The whole point of externalities is
that people aren't bearing any cost for them: tax and/or ban is absolutely a
reasonable approach to handling them, since it makes people take literal
account of the literal downstream effects.

One more thing, on edit: the analysis you're calling for is good to do, but is
also prone to the "seeing like a state" problem. The analysis will only
include what can be easily measured... Which can leave out a lot of the story.

~~~
beerandt
LCA's are only as good as the person who performs them. But we'd be much
better off if everyone at least knew what they were, and what they try to
accomplish, specifically capturing all of those externalities.

Re: the tax and ban... Tires and lead batteries in most states in the US is
good example of this. You can tax or ban or regulate to put a cap on the
problem. But if you want to collect the existing waste already out there, an
incentive refund accomplishes much more, in less time.

------
JohnFen
I wish that more restaurants would dial back their portion sizes to something
that isn't insane.

I am seeing that more and more, and that's a good thing, but the odds are
still good that I'll be served more food than most people can eat in a
sitting, and I always feel bad when I see so much leftover food heading for
the trash.

~~~
greeniron
not sure where you're from, but i LOVE huge portions in restaurants because
that means i have leftovers to take home for the next day. do most people not
do that?

~~~
JohnFen
I'm in the US.

I don't know. I don't do that, though. Mostly because if I'm eating out, it's
usually a prelude to night doing other things -- and the last thing I want to
do is have to cart around a bag of food.

Also, I used to routinely take leftovers home. It was a habit my parents had,
and I just did it unquestioningly. Then one day I noticed that I rarely
actually ate the leftovers (they tend to not be terrific the next day) and
would throw them away anyhow.

~~~
greeniron
seriously? like, even if i'm heading out after dinner, i just leave the
leftover box in the car. if it goes bad, then it goes bad, if it doesn't,
great! lunch for next day.

and not sure how your food goes bad, if it's good in the restaurant... usually
food doesn't go bad so quickly, but maybe you are one of those people who have
some irrational aversion to leftovers (nothing wrong with that, my girlfriend
is like that too) even though it's perfectly fine. right now i'm literally
having reheated leftover pasta from a fine dining restaurant dinner last
night, and i'm thoroughly enjoying it.

~~~
cableshaft
Food shouldn't be left out unrefrigerated for more than 2 hours, is the USDA's
recommendation, otherwise the bacteria can multiply to dangerous levels. Even
if you eat it later and don't get sick, it doesn't mean it wasn't a risky
thing you did.

So people that go out to eat then go out and do other things that night before
going home, unless it's the middle of winter and the car is basically a
refrigerator itself, probably shouldn't bother bringing leftovers home with
them.

[https://www.thekitchn.com/how-long-can-you-leave-cooked-
food...](https://www.thekitchn.com/how-long-can-you-leave-cooked-foods-
unrefrigerated-kitchen-facts-218225)

~~~
jfengel
If you're going to eat it, you've got up to 4 hours. Two hours is the time to
get it out of the danger zone if you're going to leave it in the fridge. But
if you're going to eat it rather than store it, the guidelines are more
lenient.

~~~
cableshaft
Have a source for that? I can't find a mention of that anywhere.

~~~
jfengel
I apologize: the USDA uses only the 2 hour rule. The 2/4 hour rule is common
in most of the rest of the world, most prominently in Australia, e.g.:
[https://timestrip.com/2-hour-4-hour-rule-haccp-
plans/](https://timestrip.com/2-hour-4-hour-rule-haccp-plans/)

------
spodek
People have sent me this link because I've reduced my food packaging to
filling less than one load of trash per year (which I blog about
[http://joshuaspodek.com/avoiding-food-
packaging-2](http://joshuaspodek.com/avoiding-food-packaging-2)) and my diet
has become more delicious, cheaper, more social, healthier, and more
accessible for people in food deserts, who have invited me to help them cook
this way.

People also keep suggesting I start a restaurant since the food tastes so good
and is so easy to make. I'm waiting to meet the right person with experience
starting restaurants.

I'm posting because while everyone who knows the numbers considers the amount
of food waste and packaging we create unconscionable, what I don't think
people realize is that what the food industry purports to solve -- that
industrial food is more convenient or tastes more appealing -- is all wrong
compared to once you learn to cook. Then from scratch is faster, cheaper, more
delicious, more convenient. The backbone of industrial food is ignorance and
lack of skill. In places with tons of fast food restaurants but no farmers
markets or fresh produce, the best solution is more cooking from scratch to
teach people to demand fresh. The transition is hard, but doable and a great
project for enterprising people who want to help people improve their lives
and communities. I find it tremendously rewarding.

~~~
wruza
That’s interesting. My grandma (who is also a self-growing plantation lady)
always complains that store tomatoes are tasteless. But that is offset by the
price. She works all day growing them, and stores try to sell good vegetables
sometimes, but prices are putting buyers off. “Chinese chemical synthetics”
are much cheaper and affordable. I tried to calculate, out of pure scientific
interest, and with my income I could not allocate enough time to not get
serious net negative, even if was interested in shoveling and taste. Maybe
it’s a local thing.

How much time and money do you spend on growing these?

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
Tomatoes are pretty effortless to grow and you don't need to eat homegrown
exclusively to make a difference.

~~~
wruza
I wouldn’t call that effortless, unless you already have a piece of land, live
there and don’t need to go to the city for prolonged times. E.g. for me that
would mean owning a car* , renting a parking lot at workplace, owning some
land, paying for a greenhouse (idk maybe tomatoes do not need one, but in
general gh counts as a taxable building here). And of course paying/shoveling
the dirt. It is not effortless at all, unless there are prerequisites.

No idea why my question made few people upset, since I’m not against homegrown
things and only explained how it all doesn’t work locally and interested in
economics of those for whom it works.

* blasphemy for US folks, I know, but pretty valid option to not have one in my downtown; everything is cheap to rent and very close to each other.

------
dmschulman
Here I am thinking this article would be about a restaurant reusing the food
they haven't sold to help solve the problem of food waste.

Instead the problem being solved is packaging waste, and they solve it by
putting the onus on their vendors (bakers, butchers, etc) to deliver in
reusable containers.

Commendable, but isn't the larger problem the amount of food being wasted by
kitchen across the country? Sure, they compost any left over food that can be
processed, but that food could have fed hungry communities.

------
Havoc
Been giving this some thought too. Because my plastic output on food is
completely unreasonable. Basically every meal equals 2-3 plastic containers
because its all single portions salad etc

I could hit the local market. But that would mean sacrificing lunch hour to go
shopping (market hours =biz hours)

Gonna try and make an effort this year anyway

~~~
JohnFen
I don't know if this would work for you, but here's how I do my food
shopping...

For things that are relatively nonperishable (shelf life of a month or so), I
do a single massive shopping trip every month. Then I have an entire month
that I don't have to to that.

For the things that have a shorter shelf life (produce, dairy, etc.), I buy on
an as-needed basis. This typically means I stop by a store every other day on
my way home from work -- but since I'm just buying what I need for a day or
two, that shopping trip is very brief.

------
close04
The description seems a bis disingenuous. There are are plenty of leftovers
they just don't end up in a classic trash bin. I was hoping to read how they
developed a method to serve perfectly sized portions or continuously adjust
the size so there's no food thrown away. It's probably a holy grail in the
restaurant industry.

In reality _could operate without any trash pickup_ translates to _compostable
waste is composted, non-compostable waste is recycled, other waste is
donated_. Recycle and compost. Which is great but not really "no leftovers".
Is recycling paper worse than composting it? Recycling glass worse than
reusing it?

> a dishwashing setup that converts salt into soap

I have to admit I don't understand this one. Converting salt into soap? Are
they talking about actual saponification of fats from leftover food or
something else?

~~~
eloisant
Before getting to the "perfect size portion", US restaurants can start by
cutting the portion size in half. Really, you guys servings size are really
crazy.

Maybe offer free refill for customers really hungry (AFTER they're done with
their initial serving).

~~~
ghaff
>you guys servings size are really crazy

Maybe it depends where one eats. I hear people saying this and I eat out all
over the US and Europe and I guess I don't see this large and systematic
difference in portion sizes that people claim--especially of the main/protein
ingredient.

~~~
JohnFen
Most restaurants I've been to (in the US) serve me approximately twice as much
food as a actually want. It's so wasteful, as it means that I'm throwing away
half of the food each time.

------
fallingfrog
Must be an extremely full dad somewhere in the back mumbling about not letting
perfectly good food go to waste

------
Mikeb85
So they're composting and recycling? The city I live in mandates all
restaurants in the downtown core do this... (Of course we also have one of the
largest composting facilities in North America)

------
noogler67
Overweight people are more likely to gain weight without leftover. I wonder
the health influence and environment issue, which is bigger. The food are
disposable anyway, it’s the plastics electronics that matter

~~~
amdavidson
How do you contend that overweight people are going to gain weight by not
having leftovers?

The article did not suggest that the restaurant forces people to eat
everything on their plates. They just compost whatever food is left behind and
don't throw it away.

~~~
jbarberu
Also, taking home leftovers is a very American thing. Most places in Europe
serve portions that you're actually able to finish.

