{"id":19847,"date":"2023-05-25T15:47:16","date_gmt":"2023-05-25T15:47:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2023\/05\/25\/a-practical-approach-to-reducing-food-waste-according-to-manhattans-marea\/"},"modified":"2023-05-25T15:47:16","modified_gmt":"2023-05-25T15:47:16","slug":"a-practical-approach-to-reducing-food-waste-according-to-manhattans-marea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2023\/05\/25\/a-practical-approach-to-reducing-food-waste-according-to-manhattans-marea\/","title":{"rendered":"A Practical Approach to Reducing Food Waste, According to Manhattan’s Marea"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Marea, a sizable restaurant in Midtown Manhattan<\/a>, did not reduce its food waste with \u201c5 easy hacks\u201d or some miracle composting machine. Instead, the restaurant addressed the issue practically and methodically\u2014and it\u2019s exactly how you could reduce waste in your own kitchen.<\/p>\n

Since 2022, Marea has operated as a \u201czero waste<\/a>\u201d restaurant, meaning that at least 90 percent of its produced waste is diverted from landfills. Instead of hauling its garbage to a New York City dumpster\u2014which could end up rotting in Ohio<\/a>\u2014nearly all of this restaurant\u2019s waste is sent to a commercial composting<\/a> plant, where it\u2019s processed and transformed into organic fertilizer.<\/p>\n

Beyond composting, Marea has built waste reduction into all facets of its operation\u2014including product sourcing, cooking techniques, and employee onboarding. For head chef Lauren DeSteno<\/a>, the need to reduce the restaurant\u2019s waste stems from her own desire to become a more thoughtful consumer. \u201cWe’re a big restaurant, we’re busy, we go through a lot of product,\u201d she says. \u201cI started feeling like we have a responsibility to figure out a more responsible way of disposing of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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From an environmental perspective, waste reduction is certainly more responsible. When food waste is sent to rot in landfills, it produces methane, a greenhouse gas four times more harmful than carbon dioxide. According to the EPA<\/a>, households and restaurants in the United States produce 40 million tons of food waste annually. Globally, food waste accounts for 7 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.<\/p>\n

Of course, Marea is not the first restaurant to monitor its environmental footprint. In recent years, many restaurants have adopted similar zero-waste identities. A 2020 Smithsonian Magazine<\/em> article titled the \u201cThe Rise of Zero-Waste Restaurants<\/a>\u201d covers this trend in great detail, highlighting waste-conscious restaurants with plates made of recycled bags and owners who say things like, \u201cthe survival of the human race is not based on animal products<\/a>.\u201d Sustainably minded restaurants included in the Michelin Guide are now awarded \u201cgreen stars<\/a>\u201d for outstanding environmental performance. According to its website, Michelin\u2019s criteria for this award considers things like the provenance of ingredients, food waste systems, resource management, and the restaurant\u2019s environmental footprint. There are nearly 300 Green Star restaurants throughout the world.<\/p>\n

However, unlike most of the places covered in the Smithsonian<\/em> article, Marea is a large, high-volume restaurant (they regularly sell 120 pounds of shrimp per week). Its brand is built on expense accounts, not costly ingredients. Marea\u2019s approach to waste reduction is rooted in practicality, meaning it\u2019s actually<\/em> replicable in a home kitchen. Here\u2019s how:<\/p>\n

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Start With Technique<\/h3>\n

The first step to reducing waste is to stop unnecessarily creating it. \u201cYou don’t always have to peel onions if you’re making a stock, the outer part is just a dried inner layer of the onion,\u201d Lauren says. \u201cCarrots don\u2019t need to be peeled as long as they\u2019re cleaned and scrubbed.\u201d According to Lauren, simple technical changes are as much about reducing waste as they are building informative habits, \u201call of these little things definitely changed the mindset for our team as to how they approach dishes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The same concept applies to throwing out odds and ends that still have value. At Marea, tin foil is kept clean so it can later be recycled<\/a>, animal bones and vegetable trimmings are transformed into stocks and sauces, and bread no longer fresh enough to be sold to a customer becomes staff meal. This sort of upcycling can easily be implemented at home, only maybe you turn that stale bread into bread pudding<\/a> or savory strata to feed a few instead of many.<\/p>\n

Consult Expert Resources<\/h3>\n

Years before Marea achieved zero-waste status, Lauren believed she could transform the restaurant’s composting process entirely on her own. \u201cAt first I was like, we’ll just do it ourselves. We’ll just compost. And then getting into that, particularly in New York, I could not even wrap my head around how to figure that out.\u201d These frustrations led her to Foodprint Group<\/a>, a Brooklyn-based consultancy specializing in waste reduction. \u201cWe could not have done it without them,\u201d says Lauren.<\/p>\n

Composting, waste reduction, and environmentally conscious cooking techniques are not always intuitive or easy to put into practice. Collaborating and partnering with resources outside of your own knowledge\u2014whether it\u2019s a friend, sustainability professional, or website\u2014will make the effort much more manageable.<\/p>\n

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\n Everything You Need to Start Composting at Home
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