The Food Scout

When it comes to quantifying environmental savings, the impact just from the biggest QSR chains already boggles the mind: Domino’s has saved about 13 million trees—or 800,000 tons of cardboard—since cutting off the corners of its pizza boxes nearly 20 years ago. McDonald’s prevented about 80,000 pounds of pollution from hitting the air last year through its enviro-conscious building efforts. And Starbucks has not only saved more than 62,000 pounds of carbon-dioxide emissions via wind power, but is single-handedly saving village economies and ecosystems from collapse in South America with its ethical coffee-buying policies!

These numbers impress not everyone, however. Whereas in recent years a restaurant’s carbon-reduction efforts were hailed for making some kind of difference, the proliferation of Green claims in the media has inspired a term called “greenwashing,” and now sustainability efforts are being measured and judged for their significance and authenticity before being endorsed.

The risk that companies now face is potential consumer backlash for efforts that are deemed misleading or unworthy. Here’s a short-list of several recent types of initiatives and the reactions they have inspired:

Carbon Neutrality: PepsiCo bought $2 million, or 1 billion kilowatt-hours, of renewable energy credits in 2007 to offset all of its electricity use in one year, earning top marks from the EPA. Consumers thought this was pretty cool, too.

More recently, Fiji Water went a step further, working with Conservation International to buy carbon offsets totaling 120% of its emissions, making “carbon negative” claim. However, this bold move received negative reactions from many critics who still found it fundamentally misguided to bottle and ship water halfway across the world where drinking water exists, even if rainforests in Fiji were being saved. 

 Food Miles: Chipotle Grill buys and promotes a variety of natural meats sourced from dozens of regional producers around the country. And more recently the chain announced it was purchasing at least 25 percent of its produce from small and mid-sized local farms less than 200 miles from a given market.

Some naysayers will claim these efforts make a minimal impact, but largely they are embraced and touted by chefs and organizations like Slow Food USA as a fundamentally “right” thing to do, moving beyond simply carbon savings to an effort to sustain economies and minimize “mass production” of food.

Fair Trade: Most of the top coffee and bagel chains, including Starbucks, Caribou, Dunkin Donuts, Einstein, Peet’s, and Bruegger’s now sell Fair Trade-certified coffee. Even Ben & Jerry’s Scoop Shops are serving ice cream made with Fair Trade ingredients, sourced at  “fair” market prices that help communities in developing countries create a sustainable local economy that pays fair wages and protects the environment.

Fair trade products also include tea, cocoa, sugar, fruit, rice and wine, products almost any operation could adopt. So far, this is a pretty bullet-proof tactic that, while it can’t make up for a multitude of other “sins” a restaurant may be committing, is a sound, independently certified program worldwide that amounted to $3.62 billion in 2007.

Certified Organic / Natural: Organic and all-natural ingredient callouts are ubiquitous on menus, and many restaurants are moving to a “Certified Organic” proposition that requires compliance on 95% of its ingredients. Pizza Hut made a clever mass-market play on this trend last spring when it introduced “The Natural,” a pizza made with multi-grain crust, organic sauce, all-natural meat toppings and cheese, and packaged in a box made with 75% recycled material.

Let’s face it, eco-minded consumers have convenience needs, too, and while a few chain haters out there will refuse to patronize a large business no-matter-what, test market response must have been sufficient to warrant a roll-out in July. The smart move is that Pizza Hut never overtly claimed it was saving the rainforests or cutting down its carbon footprint with The Natural. 

(see Part 2 for the rest of the list)