Obviously Greenwashing

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LLDA shuts down 3 restos for pollution | Manila Standard Today

LLDA shuts down 3 restos for pollution | Manila Standard Today

I never thought that I would hear this kind of news again. It was for this reason that I started this blog around three years ago. Three years ago,  I was part of the LLDA Technical Working Group (TWG) for the development of effluent standards for the industry.

The point of the TWG was to develop specific effluent standards applicable to the quick serve restaurant.  I am not sure if such standards were really developed. BOD of 1000 mg/L has been common among QSR and other restaurant establishment, but the point is efforts within the facilities must be implemented or any means of pollution prevention must be integrated in the system prior to final discharge.  The QSR group is lobbying for raising the lowering the effluent standard from 50 mg/L BOD to 500 mg/L BOD. Since it is more than three years and I have no communication with the people involved in the TWG, I am not sure what progress has been made.

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Yum Brands Opens First Green KFC-Taco Bell Restaurant

By GreenerBuildings Staff

Created 2009-03-11 14:11

Northampton, Mass. — Restaurant giant Yum Brands Inc. has opened an eco-friendly KFC-Taco Bell in Northampton, Mass., marking the 11-year-old company's first attempt to seek green building certification for one of its eateries.



The restaurant is designed according to environmental goals that include cutting energy and water consumption by 30 percent and reducing CO2 emissions. Operations at the new site are also expected to reduce waste and the amount of rubbish sent to landfills; the restaurant composts and recycles other waste, grease and used cooking oil. The company is seeking certification for the restaurant based on the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environment Design standards.

With some 36,000 KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Long John Silver's, A&W and Wing Street restaurants in more than 110 countries and territories, Yum Brands Inc. bills itself as the world's largest restaurant company.

The firm issued its first corporate responsibility report last year. And the construction of the KFC-Taco Bell in Northampton is intended as the "first of a series" of projects being pursued by Yum Brands' Building Environmental Sustainability Team as part of the company's Energy Environment and Economics (E3) Initiative, the report says.

The report also says the new restaurant and the initiative make up "the primary exploration vehicle to test and evaluate green building methodologies." Data about the performance of the new restaurant and that of other company sites are expected to inform the Yum Brands' work to green existing buildings, plan prototypes and develop in restaurants.

The new restaurant in Massachusetts has a lighting control system that takes advantage of natural light and uses LED lights inside and out where feasible. The site features energy efficient kitchen and building equipment, rainwater harvesting, a rain garden that serves as filter for storm water and low-flow water fixtures. In addition, the restaurant uses solar energy to preheat fresh air entering building, reducing the need for natural gas.

Yum also said counter tops, insulation and materials used in the building contain recycled content and that wood used in construction was harvested sustainably.
_{Photographs by Derry Berrigan, DBLD Lighting Design, courtesy of Yum Brands} 

• GreenerBuildings
• Architecture & Design
• Energy
• Materials
• Water Use

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Source URL: http://www.greenerbuildings.com/news/2009/03/10/yum-brands-opens-first-green-kfc-taco-bell-restaurant

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Disturbing News from Taco Bell!

Taco Bell's New Green Menu Takes No Ingredients From Nature

The video from ONN was forwarded by Squidgirl! Its a Taco Bell spoof....some people thought it was real. Its really funny but I found it disturbing because those kinds of  PR guys go around the fast food offices "spin-doctoring" proven scientific research on the impacts of fast food operations. Those PR people made my work life difficult to a certain degree but it made the fast food smell good in the public just like roasted burger with melting cheese on top....yum!

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Life Cycle Thinking

In my readings, I came across an old article about a cause I once supported during my college days. I guess I had previously written about it in an earlier post. I once supported a popular civil society group in convincing some big fast food company to switch from polystyrene to reusable wares. It was a victory on our part because gradually, the fast food company's ware did change part of their dine-in customers. However, after a decade, these fast food who once got acclaim for their effort in shifting are now condemned as polluters of our waterways because the cost to clean up their effluents is still not present. The point is we should never look at one thing and think such is a great thing, environmentalists still haven't caught up with life cycle thinking. 


I guess this is my problem being most of the time a consultant more than being an advocate which is every now and then. Sometimes, I just know too much because I have been in both sides of the fence, before lobbying for stricter environmental regulations and working for an industry requesting for a compliance holiday. But the point is what matters is our overall impact.

Ever since we were born, we have always consumed resources. A professor who had passed away a year ago once told us in his lecture that it is much more energy efficient to die than to stay alive, wherever he is, he sure has reached a level of optimum efficiency. Looking at the chicken diagram, well I have eaten so many eggs and so many chicken in my lifetime and that consumption had supported the chicken farms, etc., etc.

Going back to the fast food sector, polystyrene packaging is not the only issue, not only waste water or its impact on the Amazon rain forest since most them outsource their beef from that region. We should know that all fast food corporations are made out of people, not in the "soylent green" sense but in the human resource sense. What drives these people to stick to their guns and continue on their unsustainable path is the way they think and how they see things and the need of their immediate customers. It will be quite a while but the transition is on-going.

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SocialFunds.com: Green Fast Food: Really Here or a Green Dream?

SocialFunds.com Article
Sat Aug 29 04:29:49 2009
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admin (mailto:admin@fastfoodgreenwash.org) sent you

this article:

Green Fast Food: Really Here or a Green Dream?

The fast food industry is seeing a growing demand for environmental sustainability. How can investors, consumers, and other stakeholders know which restaurants are truly embracing sustainable development and which are only greenwashing their practices?
To read this article please go to:
http://www.socialfunds.com/news/article.cgi?sfArticleId=2529

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Locavores: Closer to Home

Is it colonial mentality that enables us to judge that imported is always better? Nowadays, the rule is imported is cheaper, especially if it came from India, China or Vietnam. But if we are told that a product came from Australia, New Zealand or Brazil, we might think otherwise, it might be better??? Where it came from is a relative term, how it came about is what matters.

When I think of Beef and Brazil combined, I think about the destruction of the Amazon Rainforest which leads to habitat loss of endemic species and loss of biodiversity and analyzing its impact further it will lead to climate change. In the Philippines, it is still not mainstream knowledge, but globally it is quite a concern and efforts by Brazil to claim sustainability in the cattle ranching industry is often criticized for being too greenwashed. The funny thing however for this case is the burger joint is not aware that it is proclaiming support against sustainable development. The truth is Beef from Brazil is Cheap and outsourcing beef from Brazil minimizes a burger joint's operating costs.

The globally expansive supply chain of the fast food is the reason why it is unsustainable. I once wrote that McDonald's insistence on the use of trawled Alaskan Pollack for its fillet-o-fish (even its insistence on carrying the Fillet-O-Fish in countries with little or no demand) not only causes impacts on the Bering Sea but also foregone benefits are accrued due to its failure to consider outsourcing fish from local aquaculture development in developing countries. It is only recently that I encountered the term locavore. If a carnivore eats meat, a herbivore eats plants, then a locavore eats local. Is localization an option for fastfood giants? However, this joint is closer to home.

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To Fast Food or Not To Fast Food

I don't feel comfortable writing fast food as part of professional background in my resume especially on top of it. Early on I know that fast food in general is not environmentally sustainable given its core operational nature and by now I realize my contribution is just going to be another futile expedition given the time I spent with the industry. I guess back then when I accepted this challenge, I thought I had this idealist sense that I can make some change, even a very little one and anyway they pay well at the corporate level.

The operation in the lower reaches of the hierarchy is too cost effective and unbearably hard (even demeaning) for someone like me, but it is this frugal efficiency that has raked so much profit for the fast food giants that is enjoyed in the corporate level.

In Donella Meadow's Thinking in Systems, it was emphasized that hierarchies are formed to serve the betterment of those at the bottom. This realization stretches your mind to think that the environmental problems or non-compliance of fast foods to regulations can also be attributed to the indifference of corporate policy makers to the situation of the people who does the dirty work. It is common sense to note that the dirt is caused by the dirty work and someone has got to do the dirty work somehow.

In my experience with the QSR, the environmental improvement suggestions by those well embedded in the corporate level are often out of touch with the actual people who are directly involved in the maintenance of the end-pipe operations since they are already comfortable in their positions at the top of the hierarchy and it is a lot easier to blame the "hit-man" at the end of the pipe. Oftentimes, these corporate suggestions does not even make sense, they try to integrate it with a promotional scheme rather than the betterment of those in the bottom.

When you assassinate someone with a hit man of course it is difficult to determine who is the mastermind unless you take the time to find out the motive. It might be a brutal metaphor about how industries pollute the environment, often out of site is out of mind and like any dictator who brutally orders the kill, they still proclaim their virtues (http://www.grist.org/article/2009-07-23-the-eternal-durability-of-greenwash)

In my interviews with lowly service crews, it is easy to see that they are open canvases and they just need to be aware to connect that what they are doing is causing all the pollution. It is this job-specific awareness that will teach these kids to gain integrity. However, marketing products, fun runs or other PR stuff are not interpreted by the lowly service crew as aid to helping the environment and conserve its natural resources but additional work and high volume stress.

The best gauge so far to know whether a fast food is really doing its part toward sustainable development is not to look at its promotional campaigns and sponsorship in environmental conservation efforts but to ask their lowly service crew about what their company has taught them on how to protect the environment. If they tell you that flippin' burgers can make you successful...that fast food has a long way to go regardless of what it has marketed itself in terms of their environmental stewardship efforts.

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