Greener Restaurants Certification Is a Sham

Sustainable eaters definitely face plenty of dilemmas when we go out to eat. Where is the food coming from? Is it local? Is it organic? How many miles did it travel to get to the restaurant? What about how this place is run? Is it energy efficient? There's no shortage of questions we could ask of a dining establishment, and it's recently become clear that some restaurants that claim to be sustainable or "green" are anything but.

Reporters at The Greenwashing Blog recently uncovered the true nature of the National Restaurant Association's "Greener Restaurants" program. Essentially, all a restaurant owner has to do to become certified is pay a $250 fee and click a few choices on the site's online survey. Then, voilá: a printable "Greener Restaurant Certificate" can be displayed to customers. No one verifies the claims, no one conducts any sort of audit of the restaurant. Check out Treehugger's video to see just how easy it is.

I'm sure the program means well—the Web site offers a number of useful solutions to help restaurant owners embrace sustainable practices. But as someone who has worked at many restaurants, I'd hazard a guess that quite a few owners are more interested in the door decal than the self-regulation that's meant to go along with the certification.

There are businesses working to provide restaurants with real resources and certifications for sustainability, but they are pretty scarce. I'll admit I was a little skeptical upon reading that the Partnership for the Environment's members show commitment "by participating in an independent audit of their environmental policies and by actively working together towards a cleaner and healthier planet." It sounds pretty fluffy, but upon further investigation, the small shop of consultants checks out. The restaurants that the group certifies are primarily around the New York Metro area, but at least it's a step in the right direction.

I'm still on the hunt for a national sustainable restaurant certification. The Green Restaurant Association appears to be the most extensive, but when I type my zip code into the search engine, I get no results. I live in the Bay Area, so I'm pretty sure that's not right. If I lived in the UK, I'd definitely use the Sustainable Restaurant Association's awesome mapping service. Luckily, I can at least use the Eat Well Guide's advanced search option to find specific products or production methods.

I hope that a resource that independently verifies restaurants' "green" claims becomes available soon. More and more consumers are becoming conscious of where their food comes from—it'd be great to have a door decal we could trust.

Photo via Stock.Xchng