Diners Guide to Green Restaurants

Green Restaurant Association Develops Environmental Guidelines

Jun 20, 2009

Diners who want to reduce their carbon footprint can eat at restaurants that follow the guidelines created by the Green Restaurant Association (GRA).

Since 1990, the Green Restaurant Association (GRA) has provided convenient and cost-effective tools to help the restaurant industry take steps to reduce any harmful impact on the environment and guide diners to restaurants practicing sustainability.

History of the GRA

When the GRA was founded, it set out to investigate what its role would be by asking four questions:

What the full environmental impact of the restaurant industry was?
What were the stumbling blocks preventing restaurants in a more environmentally sound manner?
What tools did restaurants need in order to be cost-effective and convenient to make the right choices?
What needed to happen to develop those tools and begin implementing them in restaurants?

The answers helped GRA develop its Certification standards and a system to make the process of change both efficient and rewarding for restaurant management and employees.

The Initial Audit Before Certification

There are two goals set by GRA in doing the first audit a restaurant:

Recognizing the actions a restaurant has already achieved in terms of sustainability.
Generating a list of additional actions.

It is determined what actions a restaurant could achieve immediately and those that can be included for gradual green action.

These are followed up with performance audits for successfully implemented green actions items. If this is successful, the restaurant receives a certificate that can be used in its advertising and displayed in the facility. This certificate must be renewed annually to make sure it is implementing and maintaining sustainable performance.

The GRA Database and Partnering

Eventually it built largest database of environmental solutions for the restaurant industry.

The result was a source for media outlets that helped to spread the word that restaurants could join many other industries interested in environmental sustainability. GRA now partners with some of the largest distributors, manufacturers and restaurant corporation.

GRA provides:

environmental assessments, consulting and a transparent certification program to resturant and other food service facilities.
an endorsement program for the best environmental products in the restaurant industry.
an on line guide of Certified Green Restaurants (R), listing all the environmental accomplishments achieved by each restaurant.
works with distributors to help them carry the best environmental products, green their own operations and educate sales staff as to the most important environmental issues of the day.