New community foundation program takes aims at restaurant food waste - Park Record
New community foundation program takes aims at restaurant food waste - Park Record
A movement is underway to divert food waste from Summit County’s quickly filling landfill, spearheaded by the Park City Community Foundation and supported by local leaders in sustainable tourism.
The effort began last year with a residential food waste diversion program, incentivizing households to participate by covering startup costs. Now the focus has shifted to the commercial sector — restaurants, caterers, Airbnbs, and nightly rentals — where the potential for impact is even greater.
This month the foundation announced the Zero Food Waste Restaurant Cohort program designed to bring restaurants to the party.
At the heart of the initiative is the Climate Fund, which Park City Community Foundation relaunched in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Andy Hecht, the foundation’s Climate Fund manager, explained that the fund’s renewed focus was intentionally narrowed to target a tangible local problem.
“After talking with experts, their answer was food waste,” Hecht said. “Look at what the food waste does in the landfill. Look at the money it costs filling up the landfill. And then one thing that wasn’t broadly known was all the methane that it creates when it gets to landfill.”
Hecht said that with restaurants the diversion process looks different than a personal kitchen. Different prep stations and higher volume can pose unique challenges. That’s part of the reason the community foundation is helping cover the startup costs for the cohort and they work together to sort out kinks.
Up to 20 businesses will be selected to participate in the hands-on program that provides support through individualized consulting, a workshop day on June 3 and funding for infrastructure and service costs.
“This is also for us to learn,” said Megan Fleming, director of marketing and communications at the Park City Community Foundation. “Before we really scale a larger program, what are the challenges that people are having in their businesses?”
Program is designed to be flexible and adaptable, taking into account that every business is unique. Restaurants on Main Street may face different logistical constraints — such as space limitations for compost bins — than others in Kimball Junction or other parts of Summit County, Fleming said. There are also wildlife considerations, she said, which they’ve heard from similar towns like Aspen, Colorado, can cause challenges. Bears are prevalent in downtown Aspen, for instance.
The foundation is partnering with ReFED, a national leader in food waste solutions, to provide consulting and strategy assistance to participating businesses. The goal is to help them develop customized waste reduction and diversion plans that are effective and sustainable.
Morgan Mingle, director of sustainable tourism at the Park City Chamber/Bureau, views the initiative as a critical part of the region’s broader 10-year Sustainable Tourism Plan.
“It looks really holistically at all of the systems in Park City to make sure that we are appropriately elevating environmental and social needs when it comes to supporting this thriving visitor economy,” she said.
Mingle said that while many business owners want to do the right thing, the challenge can be overwhelming.
“Even if you’ve taken the step to start Googling ‘How do I cut the carbon impacts of my business?’ you’re just hit with so much information, and not all of it is particularly useful,” she said.
That’s where this cohort model aims to step in, offering businesses tools and support while also fostering a sense of community around shared values, officials said.
When it comes to eliminating food waste for entities like restaurants, Mingle said there are upstream and downstream considerations.
“Upstream is everything that happens to produce that item, be it food or a cup or whatever, to get to the consumer. So when it comes to food, it’s everything from the land it took to grow the food, all the processes, to process it, package it, transport it, get it to a restaurant and get it on a plate,” she said. “From that point, downstream is disposal.”
Reducing upstream waste by tweaking operations — like ordering less or redesigning menus — can lead to immediate cost savings and a smaller environmental footprint.
“One of the best things that restaurants can do is offer a half-size or a small and large portion size for a meal they already have,” she said. “It actually usually increases the margins on what the restaurant is profiting from those meals, and it lets people self-select if they know that they’re not going to finish a typical larger portion.”
The program will also discuss behavioral design tactics, what Mingle calls “Jedi mind tricks,” to nudge consumers toward better choices. Like how places in Vail, Colorado, hire staff to sort waste, the goal is to take the burden off visitors and other staff.
“You’re not giving people a chance to mess up if you’re doing that service for them,” she said. “Almost all of the behavior change research shows that if you want someone to adjust how they’re acting, you just have to make it part of essentially community character.”
If food waste reduction becomes the norm in Park City, baked into the operations of businesses and the expectations of residents, visitors will naturally follow suit, the program leaders believe.
“We’re very aware that tourists and visitors are going to probably be the last people to adopt,” said Fleming. “Our hope is to really get it fully saturated within the communities, so that when they are here, it is just second nature, and it’s just so obvious that that’s what you do, too.”
Applications are open through April 28, and the foundation is hoping to recruit a mix of participants from across the county. Businesses interested in partaking in the program can apply before 11:59 p.m. on April 28 online: tinyurl.com/2fysv5zh.
