BOSTON—The Green Restaurant Association (GRA) announced that it has updated its Certification System to the points-based Green Restaurant 4.0. For the past two decades, the GRA has been certifying restaurants across North America with its environmental standards. Every few years, the GRA upgrades its certification standards to help the restaurant industry move toward environmental sustainability. Green Restaurant 4.0 will provide a comprehensive and user-friendly method of rewarding restaurants with points in each of the Environmental Guideline categories: Energy, Water, Waste, Disposables, Chemical and Pollution Reduction, Sustainable Food, and Sustainable Building Materials.
Under the Green Restaurant 4.0 standards, restaurants will have the ability to reach one of three new Levels of Certified Green Restaurants:
• Two-Star Certified Green Restaurants will have a minimum of 100 points;
• Three-Star Certified Green Restaurants will have a minimum 175 points; and
• Four-Star Certified Green Restaurants will be trailblazers and that have tallied at least 470 points.
“The Goal of Green Restaurant 4.0 is to help the restaurant industry take a large step forward in becoming more environmentally sustainable,” said GRA Executive Director Michael Oshman. “Ten years ago, it was hard for us to even ask our Certified Green Restaurants to recycle because it wasn’t available in every town or city. Essentially, the marketplace has caught up with our mission and there are now thousands of products and services available that make it easier and more cost effective for restaurants to ‘go green’.”
As the pioneers of the Green Restaurant movement, the GRA has worked for nearly two decades to develop and compile the industry’s largest database of environmental solutions. In that time, the organization has consulted thousands of restaurants across the United States and collected the feedback necessary to create the Green Restaurant 4.0 standards, beginning work on the groundbreaking standards two years ago.
“Our job, as the founders of the Green Restaurant movement, is to encourage restaurants to keep moving forward, and that is the point of these new standards,” said Oshman. “This is a very proud moment for us as an organization.”
For more information regarding the Green Restaurant Association’s certification standards, visit the newly designed www.dinegreen.com.
