Whether a chain of 39 restaurants or 1,000, incorporating local, sustainable practices in a fast-food business can be accomplished. This is exactly what Burgerville has done. This Pacific Northwest chain of 39 fast-food restaurants has set the bar for “green” fast-food, looking for ways to deepen their commitment to fresh, local, sustainable practices through partnerships with local businesses, farms and producers.
It’s right there in their motto: Fresh. Local. Sustainable. It’s no surprise. To many people, eating fast-food has lost its appeal. Films like Super Size Me, Fast Food Nation and the recent release of Food, Inc. have all exposed the negatives of fast-food dining. For example, where the hell are those 2 meat patties in your Big Mac coming from? Where are the eggs coming from to stack that Egg McMuffin? How about those delicious, salty Fries? If you guessed inhumane industrial farms from scattered locations all over the globe, full of steroid-injected cattle and chickens, shipped to processing plants that use whatever scraps they can blend into this so-called “ground beef”…well, you guessed right.
So, how has Burgerville distanced itself from the negatives that are associated with global fast-food chains? Burgerville burgers are “made from pastured vegetarian-fed and antibiotic-free beef. The eggs on their breakfast biscuits are from cage-free hens that have never been treated with antibiotics…Even desserts and sides rely on seasonal, local ingredients—blackberry milkshakes are only available in season, as are the hand-prepared buttermilk-battered onion rings made from Walla Walla sweet onions grown in Washington and Oregon” (burgerville.com).
Ingredients are only a portion of the environmentally-friendly efforts made by Burgerville. Burgerville purchases 100% renewable wind power credits that equal the total energy used in all 39 Burgerville locations and corporate headquarters. If you’re a number’s person, that amount of wind energy avoids adding 17.4 million lbs. of CO2 to the region annually. “Eliminating this volume of harmful greenhouse gases is the equivalent of taking approximately 1,700 cars off the road or reducing the number of miles driven in the region by 19 million” (burgerville.com).
You think it stops there? I wouldn’t have a Blog topic if it did. Two years ago, Burgerville delivered 53,000 gallons of cooking oil to refineries for recycling. The oil was converted locally into approximately 39,750 gallons of biodiesel for diesel-powered commercial trucks and cars.
The story continues. One of the backbones of the green movement is limiting waste. All 39 Burgerville locations are fully recycling and composting. They are keeping 85% of their waste out of landfills…that would be 85% of 340 tons of waste each month. Burgerville restaurants recycled everything from plastic to glass to paper to tin. All food waste and food-soiled paper and packaging are being turned into nutrient-rich compost that will return to nourish the soil.
When you first walk in to Burgerville, it looks very much like a fast-food restaurant. But the details you notice throughout the whole process, from the purchase to the right-hook you make when throwing your “garbage” away, make it unique. From the 100% recycled, compostable straws, to the thin, recycled packaging that your burger is wrapped in, the experience simply makes you feel good. And the burgers are incomparable. If you’ve never had free-range, vegetarian-fed beef, you are neglecting your body.
With restaurant locations everywhere, and the availability of local, low-impact farms in virtually every state, fast-food chains like McDonalds and Burger King have no excuse not to provide free-range, vegetarian-fed beef to their consumers. And with profit margins that make Burgerville look like a lemonade stand on the corner of a culdesac, why are these fast-food juggernauts not buying renewable energy credits (at least a percentage of their monthly energy use), or investing in something as cheap as 100% compostable straws? The conclusion…if a 39-restaurant fast-food chain can, so can they.
Tags: business, organic food, Sustainability