What's Rosie the Riveter doing at Mama's?Posted on 04/21/2008
Rosie the Riveter makes a
World War II come back!
During WWII
Rosie rallied the civilian public (mostly women at the time) to help the
national effort by working in factories and sent the message of personal sacrifice
for the good of all.
Today Rosie the Riveter is helping
Mama's Brown Bags spread 3 R's: REDUCE,
REUSE and RECYCLE. We found out that
sacrificing packaging and not wasting food isn't such a big sacrifice after
all!
REDUCE ~ REUSE ~ RECYCLE!
Mama's REDUCES:
- Using minimal packaging whenever possible (you
may have noticed this!)
- Delivering lunches in brown bags - although they
may make a crinkling sound during your meeting clean up, reusing or recycling
is a snap (you can wad it up into your hand!).
- Promoting platters (made from light cardboard NOT heavy plastic) etc, for group lunches - less
individual packaging.
- Pre-measuring portions for less food waste.
- Serving apples in the package nature provides
(yes, a whole apple!).
- Utilizing water bottles that use 30% less
plastic.
- Using recycled paper products that are NOT
chemically dyed brown to look recycled.
- Making soups and specials out of food "extras"
to sell in our retail location.
- Tightly managing fresh produce and breads to
ensure less waste due to freshness.
- Delivering bags lunches in handle bags and
platter lunches in original containers - no extra card board boxes are used.
- Lunches are served only with the utensils needed
(our sandwiches don't include forks!)
- For platters etc, utensil sets are sold
separately.
- Where ever we can we use plastic (utensils, dressing containers, etc) made from
renewable corn!
- All of our "house account" invoices are
delivered with the lunch - no extra envelopes, invoices and statements are
mailed.
- We promote online ordering (less paper - receipts
are emailed).
- RESULT: Many food service companies report that
10% waste is the "norm" - Mama's waste is so minimal that it is under 1%.
Mama's REUSES:
- Asking customers to save our delivery handle
bags so we can re-use them on future deliveries (many of our customers keep
their supply at the receptionist desk for us to pick up!).
- Most of our kitchen equipment was purchase used,
our goal was to have a working kitchen as a opposed to a magazine kitchen.
- Our retail space also has used furniture and
tables.
- We chose not to purchase delivery vehicles to
use only for a few time slots in a day.
We gave up advertising our name on them but we know an important way to
save the environment is to reuse equipment etc, instead of buying new for
individual uses.
- We re-use incoming glass containers, cardboard
and plastic bags for other purposes.
- We couldn't find a way to re-use calories, but
we are still trying!
- RESULT: We have very low recurring costs and we
are very inventive!
Mama's RECYCLES:
- Recycling all paper products, glass, plastic
that cannot be reused.
- Composting what little food waste we have.
- RESULT: Hey, who took the garbage?
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