The Sweet Tomato or also known as the Soulplantation restaurants are based in San Diego. This restaurant is one of the best “green” restaurants because it has made so many changes in its operation by reducing waste, boosting recycling, and decreasing the energy usage as well as serving food on reusable dishes. For their environmental efforts, the Green Restaurant Association announced that the Sweet Tomatoes and Souplantation was to receive the certification of environmental sustainability.
The Green Restaurant Association is known to be one of the prominent organizations that have been certifying restaurants as well as other dining establishments for over two decades. With the certification, they would like to acknowledge Sweet Tomato and Soulplantation to be one of those restaurants with high standard of environmental standards.
The Soulplantation and Sweet Tomato came from a parent company, the Garden Fresh Corp. Over the last two years, the company has been able to develop vigorously by opening 120 outlets all over the country. All of those restaurants were certified with two star certification. All the restaurants are using energy efficient lighting, install low flow spray valves in order to reduce the use of water, purchase recycled dispenser napkins, offers fresh vegetarian food which needs less energy than the meat products.
These changes have been able to create a huge difference .The Green Restaurant Association estimated that the chain restaurants have saved 7.5 mil gallons of water, 2.1 mil pounds of waste, 4.4 kw of energy as well as almost 3200 cubic yard of landfill space. Of course these changes have not been easy and the Soulplantation and Sweet Tomatoes owners have to invest a lumpy sum of money before they can fulfill those entire requirement. However, they are highly aware that these changes will be their contribution to the world.
As for the exact amount of money that have been invested to this long project, the Garden Fresh CEO, Michael Mack refused to answer the question. He said that this number is insignificant compared to the impact that they bring to the environment. The benefits of their action will not be within the chain, but worldwide. This is also their way of educating their customers so that everyone understands that no matter how small, every action to the environment is necessary. They also would like to invite their customers to experience their high standard of environmental awareness to know that there will no comfort reduced along the way.
