Why going green is key
How many of you get to Friday and think, ‘I could really do with a takeaway’? Well before you reach for your old favourite food delivery app, think again. Eco Eats is a new, unique food delivery service with a difference; it works with the environment by supporting local farmers and encouraging sustainable business practices.
By setting your address, Eco Eats generates restaurants that are available to you. The app automatically sets a 5-mile radius for your local restaurants. This means you reduce carbon emissions by limiting how far your food has to travel. You can choose from a selection of restaurants that have been rated not only on their food but on their environmental impact. There are 10 green flags that restaurants can achieve to show how they are making a difference and promoting a green economy:
- Food donation: Restaurants donating their leftover food means less food goes to waste and into landfills. It additionally means the food that would normally be in the bin can go towards people who might really need it.
- Recycling: This should be a given for most restaurants, as there are plenty of facilities that enable restaurants to recycle their waste, preventing it from going to landfill.
- Garden on-site: A small garden on-site shows that restaurants are really thinking of their own environmental impact. Using their own produce, no matter how small, makes an impact on reducing emissions associated with global agricultural production.
- Composting: The food that doesn’t get to be donated can be composted and then re-used in the garden. This can easily be done on-site enabling a more efficient practice.
- Buying from local farmers: Supporting local businesses has never been more important with the recent changes in the global economy. By buying produce from local farmers you are helping their business and the environment by reducing transport-related emissions.
- Waterless dish spray/0 water waste: instead of rinsing all the dishes with copious amounts of water, using a one wipe cleaning spray reduces the restaurant’s water usage.
- Plastic-free straws: You have seen these before and you should hopefully see them in all restaurants! They are great for sipping from and for decomposing easily.
- Biodegradable containers
- Fairtrade: You don’t have to be ordering chocolate for it to be fair-trade. Lots of foods can be fair-trade and it means the restaurant you are buying from is helping farmers on the other side of the world.
- Organic food: Restaurants buying organic will have an idea of the more environmentally friendly farming practices that organic farmers use. You buying from them will help encourage more farmers to practice sustainable methods on their farms, reducing agriculture’s impact on the environment.