ANSI Approves Green Seal for Restaurants

ANSI Approves Green Seal for Restaurants
Posted On September 9, 2009 (8:48 am)
Restaurants seeking to be "green" have another measure of confidence...
Article taken from Environmental Leader - http://www.environmentalleader.com
URL to article: http://www.environmentalleader.com/2009/09/09/ansi-approves-green-seal-for-restaurants/


For the industry, this seems to be good news! However, are fast foods included in this standard? Fine Dining and Quick-Serve Restaurants have different operating capacities, once, I even heard people in our industry wanting the QSR to have a separate industry classification.  I am so glad to hear that GS-46 follows the specs and guidelines of ISO14024 which follows specifies a comprehensive framework to operations on how to reduce their environmental impacts.

Maybe I'm just disillusioned about my job because most of my superiors don't like dealing with comprehensive frameworks specified by international science-based standards and would rather make their own "egotistical" frameworks. In my studies, I have learned that the environment is not chaotic and we can always find order like in food chains and the order leads to interconnections.

For more information please see Green Seal, Inc.

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Saving the Earth is a Balancing Act...It Needs A Lot of Thinking Before We Could Judge...

I have been to both sides of the fence, in my early days, I once supported Greenpeace-like civil society groups in their campaigns to eliminate the ills of the environment by eliminating the cause. However, just my luck when my first job was with a business school to do research on how companies can implement environmental management systems. After more than a decade, the business school paradigm did influence my way of thinking but the social action awareness is still there. My problem right now is how do I put the two together.

Stakeholders are important, they can be customers, the government, regulatory agencies or even our Friends of the Earth. Having a voice is important and fast food companies must consider the deeper meaning of their stakeholder's advocacy not just simply please them and give them what they want.  Just like the polystyrene dilemma, in effect, a new problem arose in term of effluent and air quality impacts within the vicinity of a fast food facility. Such is the impact of just simply trying "to please" a stakeholder rather submit themselves on a far more critical environmental due diligence.

Often, we see environmental managers strongly influenced by NGO pressure that they fail to consider that managing environmental impacts is implemented in a strategic framework....I remember a case when a fast food manager agrees to set up an NGO-recommended compost bins for a fast food store without due consideration to the existing HACCP-based food safety management system....well flies swarmed over the burgers...and it became bad for business.

The purpose of civil action is not to be simply pleased for a certain issue, it requires companies to take a more responsible approach in their strategies that environmental management becomes a core organization framework not just simply a fire-fighting PR agenda.

(Photo credits from Greenpeace)

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