How NYC Restauranteurs and Chefs Are Turning the Tables on Food and Plastic Waste
A decade ago, New York City was eager to do its part to help the environment by using its new regulations to reduce food and plastic waste generated by the city’s thousands of restaurants.
Then COVID-19 struck and eating out came to a halt. Virtually all restaurants closed, many temporarily and many forever. Takeout—or dining at home—became the norm. And all this in a city that experiences an 80% fail rate for newly opened eateries even in good times.
Today, things have turned around, not only for the NYC restaurant industry, but also for the city’s conscientious diners, chefs, and restaurant owners who care about reducing restaurant waste. Dining out is thriving again, and the city has unveiled plans to renew enforcement of older waste regulations while also introducing new (2023) regulations to curb plastic use in takeout food orders. For instance, plastic straws and beverage stirrers are now available to restaurant patrons but only upon request. Plastic carryout bags are still allowed, but restaurants that once bagged and piled up their trash overnight for sidewalk pickup must now use rat-resistant containers.
Meanwhile, diners who support efforts to curb both food and plastic waste are starting to frequent a small-but-growing number of “zero waste” establishments that claim to generate no food or plastic waste whatsoever.
Recovery Means More Trash
For some, these welcome changes could not have come too soon. An estimated 22 billion to 33 billion pounds of food are wasted annually by US restaurants, according to the FoodPrint project.
An estimated 22 billion to 33 billion pounds of food are wasted annually by US restaurants, according to the FoodPrint project.
Moreover, those staggering numbers do not include plastic waste. According to NBC News, the NYC mayor’s office reported an estimated 18 million tons of single-use plastic eating utensils had been extracted in 2019 from the city’s residential waste stream.
Citing a report from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the Hunter College New York City Food Policy Center reported in 2020 that 68% of all discarded food in New York and two other major US cities is still edible, and that in New York City alone, 20% of this edible waste was generated by restaurants and caterers.
What NYC Does About Food Waste
NYC currently requires restaurants to separate their organic food waste and to “arrange for collection by a private carter.” Alternatively, eateries can self-transport organic waste or process it on-site.
Enforcement, though relaxed during the pandemic, was re-established in mid-2022 to dole out a $250 to $1,000 fine to eateries that do not follow the separation rules.
There have been accounts by dedicated scavengers (so-called “dumpster divers”) that few restaurants follow these rules, but these same accounts noted that the waste-separation rules do not apply to smaller establishments.
Takeout food discarded at home is also being impacted by a city initiative, introduced in 2023, to collect curbside residential food waste for composting. The city’s capacity to fully compost that waste is still in development.
Zero-Waste Dining on the Rise
From chef Mauro Colagreco’s renowned three-Michelin-star Mirazur in France to restaurants scattered throughout New York City and the world, zero-waste dining and waste reduction strategies are establishing themselves as potentially profitable trends in the restaurant industry.
One review of 114 restaurants in twelve countries found that almost all establishments “achieved a positive return” on their waste reduction investment, and an average of 75% of the sites recouped that investment within a year. In addition, none of the places reviewed spent more than $20,000 on waste reduction efforts.
According to Barron’s, Mirazur became “the world’s first restaurant [Jan/2020] to receive “Plastic Free” certification,” inspiring over 500 inquiries from other restauranteurs interested in going “plastic free.” In London, chef Doug McMaster’s Silo claims to be the “world’s first zero-waste restaurant.”
In January 2020, just prior to the pandemic-related restaurant lockdowns. Bon Appetit reported how west~bourne, an “LA-inspired all-day café” in New York’s Soho neighborhood, competed to be the city’s first “certified” zero-waste restaurant. The magazine noted that a restaurant manager would take pictures of the “compost, recycling, and trash accumulated” in a single day. The bags would then be weighed and documented on a spreadsheet as evidence of their zero-waste effort.
By 2018, a few NYC restaurants were already featuring their versions of “zero [food] waste dishes.” These offerings included often discarded food parts, such as “broccoli, cauliflower and mushroom stems,” in the dishes. Other excess food parts were turned into vinegars or sent off to farmers for their pigs to eat.
Blackbarn Shines with Peat
Creativity and innovation continue to drive the city’s waste-reduction trend as restaurants, such as Blackbarn in Manhattan, find inventive, tasty ways to keep conscientious diners coming. CBS News reported in 2023 that Blackbarn's menu, co-created by executive chef Brian Fowler and chef/owner John Doherty, benefited from a relationship with Peat, a provider of “food waste upcycling” in the borough of Queens. Peat delivers Peat-grown mushrooms to Blackbarn (via low carbon e-bike) at a reduced price in exchange for Blackbarn’s compostable food waste (which Peat e-bikes haul away).
Today, even New York’s waste-averse home cooks can shop instore or online from Brooklyn-based Precycle for bulk food supplies with a zero-waste footprint.
Zero-Waste Exemplar
One of today’s leading examples of zero-waste dining in New York City—not to mention overall commitment to sustainability—is Rhodora Wine Bar in the borough of Brooklyn. Rhodora’s owner, Henry Rich, and director, Halley Chambers, have pledged to send “absolutely nothing” to landfills. According to Bon Appetit, their approach to outlawing plastic and food waste in their operations is comprehensive. Single-use plastics are forbidden on-site, and suppliers must meet the expectation that everything incoming is to be “recycled, upcycled, or composted.” This means that incoming packaging materials can be composted or recycled or delivery packaging can be returned and reused.
Single-use plastics are forbidden on-site [at Rhodora Wine Bar], and suppliers must meet the expectation that everything incoming is to be “recycled, upcycled, or composted.”
As a wine bar, Rhodora’s menu consists of conservas (tinned fish); hard, aged cheeses; and antipasti (pickled vegetables) meant to complement their wines. This menu helps minimize food waste and unnecessary cleaning products, and the foods’ tin and aluminum packages are easily recycled and of relatively high value.
The wine comes from “small-farm, natural winemakers” that share Rhodora’s commitment to the environment and aversion to what they describe as the often-harmful processes of “large-scale wine manufacturing,” according to Bon Appetit.
Rethinking Food Waste
The city’s growing zero-waste zeal is inspiring some restauranteurs and chefs to both reduce waste and deliver food to needy neighbors—and do so off the clock, for nothing.
Non-profit Rethink Food—founded by culinary veteran Matt Jozwiak and pioneering chef Daniel Humm of Eleven Madison Park—is passionate about upcycling nutrition that is normally lost through tossing out good food. They are creating meals for disadvantaged New Yorkers who have no access to healthy food, not to mention gourmet dining.
Serving haute cuisine to those “last” in the food line is probably unprecedented, but Rethink Food’s track record is impressive (having] put together over 14.8 million locally prepared, gourmet meals, rescuing more than 1 million tons of food.
Serving haute cuisine to those “last” in the food line is probably unprecedented, but Rethink Food’s track record is impressive. Founded in 2017, the organization is on the threshold of serving over 24 million locally prepared gourmet meals and rescuing more than 2.4 million pounds of food.
Rethink Food wants more New Yorkers to get involved. Its newly opened facility (March 2024) in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan features a “street-facing space” for the public to learn about and engage in their work. Innovative “dinner series with chefs” and community events and programming are being designed and scheduled to teach ways of fostering food security and reducing waste.
Rethink Food founder and CEO Matt Jozwiak says the new space “reflects our culture of centering community leaders, culinary professionals, and hospitality at the heart of our approach to creating a more sustainable and equitable food system.”
Six Years to Zero-Waste Dining
According to the Sustainable Restaurant Association, restaurant waste reduction involves five action points: to measure “how much and where food was wasted,” to get staff on board, to control portions (avoid “overproduction”), to review inventory and purchasing procedures, and to find ways to repurpose excess inventory and any food that could go to waste.
With growing support from the city and its diners and restauranteurs, New York City appears committed to keeping the zero-waste restaurant trend going and meeting its ambitious goal of sending no waste to landfills by 2030.
*Jerry Chesnut. Jerry Chesnut has pursued a lifelong interest in the role of diet in physical and mental well-being. Having lived more than half of his life in and near New York City, he maintains an avid interest in the city’s sustainable food scene.