A growing program in San Francisco aims to reduce landfill and help restaurants save money with some new plates and mugs.
Since 2021, 120 restaurants have participated in the city’s commercial reuse program, receiving $24,500 in grants and diverting thousands of pounds of waste. Now the San Francisco Department of the Environment, the city’s environmental protection and policy agency, is expanding the program to reach 200 restaurants each year that still use disposable foods to serve their customers.
The program offers grants of up to $500 per company to help cover the cost of purchasing reusable food and related equipment, such as bus vans and trash cans. The move is a means of implementing San Francisco’s 2021 climate action plan, which includes a goal to halve waste going to landfill by 2030.
City officials have conducted case studies with previous grantees and found cost savings of approximately $3,000 per restaurant after labor costs are deducted from the introduction of reusable materials such as dishwashing and the diversion of approximately 1,500 pounds of waste per year. The House of Dim Sum in Chinatown saw an outsized effect as it saved $33,561 in net expenses and reduced its landfill waste by 7 tons.
Disposables are ubiquitous in San Francisco, said acting director of the San Francisco Department of the Environment, Tyrone Jue. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a surge in the use of single-use items due to fears of transmission and as takeout has become a lifeline for restaurants. “People use them at home, when eating out, or even when eating out at a restaurant,” Jue said. “It’s impossible to quantify the exact number (of items used), but we’ll start with the low-hanging fruit.”
Maritza Castillo, co-owner of Mexican restaurant Que Chulada in the Richmond District, is among local restaurateurs replacing single-use foods with reusable items. The restaurant received a $500 grant from an SF Environment Department program.
Michaela Vatcheva/Special on The Chronicle
Food made from Styrofoam and other non-recyclable, non-compostable materials has been banned in San Francisco since 2017, and plastic food accessories like coffee stirrers and toothpicks have been banned since 2019 (though disposable plastic straws are available). for people with disabilities on request). But even single-use items that are recyclable or compostable can still be wasteful, explained Katherine Baird, associate director of sustainability at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. Many cities don’t have the infrastructure to break down compostables, and they may just end up in landfill where they can’t be broken down properly. Additionally, the shift to reusable products offers an opportunity to mitigate the impact of mass-producing single-use products.
“The most important part of an environmental footprint is how (a product) is made, not just whether it’s compostable, recyclable, or ends up in a landfill,” Baird said.
The commercial reuse program started in 2018 in partnership with ReThink Disposable, a program run by environmental non-profit organization Clean Water Action to discourage the use of single-use food packaging. It began with a test run at restaurants in the Seventh Ward, which includes the West Portal and Park Merced neighborhoods. With regular $200,000 in funding from the Department of Environment from waste fees, the program can reach 400 restaurants over the next two years.
Que Chulada in the Richmond District is one of them. Co-owners Maritza Castillo and Salvador Cervantes opened just under a year ago, but have already built a group of lunchtime regulars who drop by to enjoy slow-cooked carnitas and dripping Birria quesadillas. On a midweek stop, neighbors ate big burritos and crispy potato tacos while Castillo and Cervantes’ daughter Alysson doodled at the register.
Castillo served her spicy chicken enchiladas on paper plates, based on a family recipe from Guanajuato, with the usual side dishes of rice and beans. Now she serves them neatly on new oval plates.
The San Francisco Department of the Environment recommended new plates, glasses, mugs, silverware and bus accessories, such as a shopping cart and trash can, to Que Chulada, a Richmond District restaurant, to replace its single-use plates and cups.
Michaela Vatcheva/Special on The Chronicle
“The enchiladas are pretty good, but they look even better and bigger on real plates,” Castillo said.
Some items like burritos and tacos still come in reusable plastic baskets with a disposable sheet of waxed paper.
Restaurants can’t just pick and choose the plates they want: Environment Ministry staff are conducting a needs analysis and recommending which reusable plates are most appropriate. At Que Chulada, program staff recommended new plates, glasses, cups, cutlery, and bus accessories such as a trolley and trash can.
Que Chulada received his full kit three weeks ago, so hasn’t had time to track how much the reusable food has reduced waste or single-use expenses. However, Castillo said garbage collection dropped from three to two a week, which almost immediately saved money. She says a box of 480 paper plates, about $80, lasted about a week at the restaurant. The restaurant still uses some single-use items for takeout orders, which account for 20% of its transactions.
The commercial reuse program is among a few other programs in the Bay Area that aim to reduce single-use garbage from restaurants. The non-profit environmental organization Surfrider Foundation offers an Ocean Friendly Restaurant certification for restaurants that only use reusable produce and meet other related criteria. (Twelve San Francisco restaurants are participating in the program.) Back in 2019, Bay Area chain Blue Bottle Coffee announced its intention to phase out paper cups, but ultimately shelved the plan in the wake of the pandemic.
Reach Mario Cortez: mario.cortez@sfchronicle.com
