January 29th, 2010

By Ashley Phillips
Green Right Now

Consumers are being more conscious now than ever before of their own sustainable practices. They are buying from local farmers markets, recycling, and switching to LED lights.

But when a person leaves home, say to go out to eat, they could pack on the carbon calories without realizing it — especially if the restaurant they visit isn’t treading lightly on the environment.

According to the Green Restaurant Association (GRA), the certification body aiming to create an environmentally sustainable restaurant industry, an average restaurant uses 300,000 gallons of water and produces 150,000 pounds of garbage a year. Even worse, the restaurant industry as a whole, which includes approximately 900,000 restaurants in the United States, is the largest consumer of electricity in the commercial sector.

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