Going Green is in Good Taste at Toro

South End Restaurant Reduces Carbon Footprint Without Sacrificing Taste or Money

by David Pierotti, Boston-Based Freelance Writer

 Alyssa Shepherd didn’t set out to be a trendsetter, but all of us should hope she becomes one. Sheperd is the general manager of highly regarded restaurant Toro in Boston’s South End. Toro is one of Chef Ken Oringer’s four area restaurants, the others being Clio (including its attached sushi bar, Uni), KO Prime, and La Verdad. 

You may have seen Oringer’s victorious turn on Iron Chef America, but recently it has been Shepherd's turn to do battle - against waste, pollution, and CO2. She, along with the rest of the management team, has set about greening the restaurant as much as possible. “With the growing awareness of climate change, we just felt that, as a restaurant, we should do our part.”

Anyone who has ever worked at a restaurant (and really, who hasn’t?) knows restaurants consume a lot of just about everything: bottles, boxes, water, energy, and more. From all this consumption comes a tremendous amount of waste. But a growing awareness of climate change and the environmental costs of food production and consumption provoked Shepherd to implement some simple, sensible measures to green Toro.

While Shepherd and her staff started with traditional recycling of obvious materials such as cardboard and glass, one of the more innovative changes at Toro has been how they serve the most basic product – water. Most restaurants offer two types of bottled water: regular and sparkling. This means two sets of delivery trucks and two sets of glass bottles. You don’t need a calculator to figure out that the amount of energy used to produce and transport this is tremendous. When you consider it is all for a product that is already piped to its destination, it becomes even more ludicrous.  This is the type of conventional wisdom and ingrained habits that Shepherd and associates needed to usurp, and Natura was there to help.

As a manufacturer and installer of water filtration and carbonation systems, Natura offers restaurants an alternative to their traditional water systems. Instead of delivering cases of bottled flat and sparkling water that take up space, Natura provides a premium filtration system that turns ordinary tap water into high quality drinking water - and even offers the option of adding carbonation.

Regarding the transition, Shepherd says, “It wasn’t difficult at all. The company came and installed the tank. There is very low maintenance and we’re not paying for these water trucks to drive miles and miles every week.” It also improved everyday restaurant operations. “They used to have to store the bottles behind the bar and the staff would have to separate them into two different racks and drag them downstairs and then back up when the delivery truck came.”

Another cutting edge step Toro took to reduce their carbon footprint is composting. The restaurant contracted with a Charlestown, MA company called Save That Stuff to collect their degradable waste much in the same way trash is collected. All Toro had to do was add a second trash bin and ask employees to separate their refuse. At the end of the night, they collect the refuse and put it out back. Save That Stuff then takes the organic matter to local composting facilities where it eventually is used by landscapers.

The third creative but simple change made at Toro was to team with Smartfuel, a company that collects used cooking oil from area restaurants and brings the used oil to its processing plant in Seabrook, NH. The oil is then turned into biofuel and sold for automobile usage. While another collection service might sound like an added expense for the restaurant, Smartfuel pays Toro, not the other way around. Depending on the price of crude oil, Toro receives somewhere between $0.50 and $1.00 per gallon for a substance they are glad to be rid of. Additionally, while much of America’s restaurant grease is traditionally sent overseas, Smartfuel keeps this product in the area, stimulating the local economy and turning a waste product into an alternative to fossil fuels. According to Smartfuel's website, this type of biofuel results in 67% less greenhouse gas emissions. 

Shepherd says all of the changes have proven to be cost-neutral, employees have had very little trouble adjusting, and customers have not noticed a thing. Given these considerations, how can other restaurants possibly justify remaining in their old ways?

If, as a diner, you want to ensure your food dollars are going toward restaurants that make the right choices - the obvious choices, visit dinegreen.com to find a green restaurant near you.

Comments

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