Greening Restaurants Saves Environment and $ Millions

By Mary Avant

“No one can do everything but everyone can do something. Almost everything you do will seem insignificant, but it is of the utmost importance that you do it."

Mahatma Gandhi

Thimmakka Resources Takes Restaurants Green

Thimmakka's Resources works with city and county governments, utilities, businesses, vendors and community leaders to create infrastructures that make it easier for businesses to go green and help create healthier communities. The organization strives to make environmentalism convenient and affordable by even the smallest businesses, accessible to all communities, languages and nationalities.

Help to Reduce Environmental Footprint

A California-based non-profit organization started by Ritu Primlani in 1998, Thimmakka's Resources is a globally-replicable, environmental and community health program that enables communities to reduce its resource consumption and pollution while improving profitability and ethnic diversity among its businesses. The program works with all businesses, with a special focus on ethnic restaurants, helping them reduce their environmental footprint in the areas of solid waste, water, stormwater, energy and pollution prevention.

This win-win program saves restaurants and other businesses money, integrates them into city services, and generates community and government goodwill which can be leveraged to successfully continue to grow the businesses, influence lives and make a difference in the world.

Starting with Ethnic Restaurants

Primlani began environmental outreach to restaurants when research revealed that, although several guidelines for green businesses existed in the California Bay area, including one by the Association of Bay Area Governments, there was still only one certified green restaurant in all of Alameda county and two in all of San Francisco Bay area. As her research deepened, she realized that ethnic restaurants were especially underserved not only because of the time and convenience constraints restaurant owners experience, but also because of language and cultural barriers.

"Everyone goes to their local ethnic restaurant - the Ethiopians go to the Ethiopian restaurants, the Indians go to the Indian restaurants," says Primlani. "So we figured if we placed an environmental message at restaurants, their clientele would get it. We didn't know at the time that restaurants consume more energy per square foot than any other retail space; that in California they are responsible for 16% of the solid waste that goes to California landfills. Nor did we know that they are substantial consumers of waters and polluters of the storm-water system." Between 70-90% of the solid waste from restaurants going into local landfills can be diverted, says Primlani.

Best Management Practices Save Money

Designed to meet the challenges of the limited time and financial resources of businesses working on slim margins, Thimmakka's Resources helps overcome the diverse language and cultural barriers among ethnic businesses and ethnic restaurant owners and workers, as well as the limited outreach budgets of governments. Thimmakka's Resources partners with 57 local governmental, non-profit, private industries and community leaders, creating a single point of contact streamlining work-flow. The organization provides on-site training and education to businesses on Best Management Practices (BMPs) that are easy to implement, that will lower operating costs, and that are in compliance with environmental regulations.

Most importantly, the organization identifies and creates financial benefits to make environmentalism attractive to businesses. "A dangerous assumption on the part of businesses is that environmentalism costs money," says Primlani. "So they continue with business as usual when there are dire warnings about climate change and global warming. The most important thing [for business owners to realize] is that it is painless. Depending on where you are, it might take some time, but chances are you will break even within a year for lighting changes [for example]. Energy changes can be heavily subsidized too, depending on where you live."

Loans Available for Eco Friendly Products

Through the Thimmakka's Resources, businesses can receive loans for eco-friendly products, pick up energy-saving equipment, and plan a greening process that fits their schedule. "I never would have done this by myself," says Cindy Lalime-Krikorian, owner of Lalimes restaurant in the Bay area. "A small family business puts in 120 hours of work a week, and it's not a normal business. I thought I was pretty 'green.' I was heading in that direction, but I wouldn't have gone all the way without the efforts of Thimmakka."

Helps to Meet Environmental Goals

With a 90% success rate in business/restaurant recruitment (versus the 3-10% rate of government environmental outreach), Thimmakka's Resources helps communities and town governments meet their environmental goals, such as landfill reduction and water conservation, and serving hard-to-reach, underserved audiences in their environmental and community health efforts. For communities, Thimmakka's Resources is primarily a health and environment initiative that effectively reduces resource consumption and environmental pollution thereby reducing cities' operating costs, and promoting community health.

But the bottom line is it saves restaurants and other businesses money.

"In all my years of being a restaurant owner, I have yet to come across a program of its kind," says Chintala Reddy, owner of the Kamal Palace in the Bay area. "I care about the environment myself...but more importantly, they save me money in all of their environmental segments. I will be saving upwards of $6,000 per year in the upcoming year on my energy bill, and more than $1,000 on my garbage pickup fees."

Savings can come from the simplest of measures. For example Gerald Aguinaga, co-owner of Peggy Sues and Sonoma Chicken Coop, says the restaurant went from using five cases of Styrofoam cups at 2500 cups per case per week, to 300/ week, taking out 114,000 cups used annually, and saving over $5,000 annually.

Over 100 Restaurants Certified

Since it started, the organization has certified over 100 restaurants in Berkeley, Oakland, Albany, Emeryville, Union City, Fremont, San Francisco and San Jose. The City of Berkeley now has the highest number of certified green businesses in the San Francisco Bay Area, and Thimmakka's Resources helped double the number of certified green businesses (including offices) in Berkeley in just one year.

Nationally acknowledged for its work, Thimmakka's Resources and its founder, Ritu Primlani, have received numerous awards, such as the Stand on a Better World Environment Award; the Excellence in Innovation Award from the California Association of Non-Profits; the California Governor's Environmental and Economic Partnership Award ; and the U.S. EPA Annual Environmental Achievement Award.

And, of course, the real winner is the environment. Since it started, 19.4 thousand tons of solid waste (equivalent to about 245 fully loaded 737-400 Boeing jets) have been diverted from landfills; 10.8 million gallons of water have been saved (equivalent to about 59 Olympic sized swimming pools); 940.5 thousand KwH of energy have been saved (equivalent to energy consumed by 107 average American households in a year); and 473 thousand pounds of carbon dioxide was prevented from being released into the atmosphere.

And the savings for their restaurants? In five years the monetary rewards of environmentalism have totalled over $ 1.3 million. Now that's a win-win situation.

For more information thimmakka.org