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Nonprofit group to name greenest Bay Area restaurants

BAY AREA – A San Francisco-based nonprofit dedicated to greening local restaurants is in search of the Bay Area’s greenest restaurants. “Our primary objective is to make people more aware of greening restaurants and hopefully encourage more restaurant owners to green their business,” said Suparna Vashisht, managing director of the nonprofit Thimmakka.

“An estimated 16 percent of landfills in California come from food service, and most of the clients that we help green are able to divert as much as 86 percent of their garbage just through recycling or composting. If you think about it, most of their waste is food and things like paper napkins, plastic bottles.”

Thimmakka was launched in 1998 as a more general green advocacy group, but in 2002 it narrowed its focus to restaurants, which face a unique set of challenges when it comes to sustainability.

“One of the reasons we decided to focus on them is because they are a more difficult sector to reach but a very productive route for reducing waste,” Ms. Vashisht said.

“They are harder to reach because restaurant owners are typically extremely busy, and their margins are very slim. They don’t have the time or energy to focus on being green. Also owners don’t usually own their building, but there are still plenty of changes they can make beyond the building. They have a lot of potential. It’s almost like low-hanging fruit.”

Since launching the Thimmakka Certified Green Program for restaurants in 2002, the group has helped more than 120 businesses become certified according to 60 measures of water and energy conservation, pollution prevention and waste reduction. Consultants from the group visit the sites, do assessments and teach the owners simple ways to reduce their impact, including switching to non-toxic cleaners and degreasers.

The nomination deadline for the greenest restaurant contest is May 31, and the winner will be announced June 24. This is the first year for the competition, and anyone can apply or make a nomination by visiting www

.thimmakka.org. Volunteers from the group will visit the site for an environmental audit.

Ten top green restaurants will be named winners along with nine other awards for most waste reduction, most energy efficient, top water steward, most pollution prevention, most green in the East Bay, most green in San Francisco, most green in the South Bay, most green in Contra Costa and most green in Marin. Sonoma, Napa and other North Bay counties are also encouraged to apply.

So far the group has redirected almost 20,000 tons of waste from landfills, saved 60 Olympic-sized pools worth in water, saved enough energy to provide 107 American households electricity for a year and stopped 473,000 pounds of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere.