Your Guide To Green

One of the better-known benefits of working for Google is the excellent, free food. At the corporate headquarters and a few other large facilities around the world, there are full time chefs, modern kitchens, and the directive to produce restaurant quality entrees -- including vegan and omnivorous options. In a smaller office, such as ours in Tempe, Arizona, we don't have the full time chef, but Google makes sure we are well provided for via a contract with a local food management company. Every day they prepare and deliver a variety of dishes and keep the refrigerators stocked with veggie and fruit snacks. That's the upside.

The downside can be large amounts of wasted food, which does not track with Google's increased commitment to becoming a greener company. In addition to the installation of solar panels at the headquarters office in California and efforts being made to invest in renewable energy sources that cost less than coal, Green Committees have been formed at each Google office.

One of the first problems the Phoenix Google Green Committee addressed was food waste . We approached this problem from several angles:

• First we started an employee education effort by publicizing, throughout the office, that employees are encouraged to “raid the refrigerator” on their way home to help reduce the typically large supply of leftovers. This made the message clear that we have food that is being thrown away and the company would rather have employees share it with their families than have it wasted. In the first few weeks following the initial announcement, the amount of wasted leftovers decreased, especially after folks got used to the idea that the company really wanted them to take the leftovers.
• Another productive stream of food waste reduction came in the form of compost buckets that are left in the kitchen for wilted vegetables, outdated refrigerator snacks, and compostable leftovers. Employees are then given the opportunity to take the buckets home to feed their pets or use it for compost.
• Third, we worked out an arrangement to deliver leftovers to a local food bank. The problem of recovering good food is fairly tricky and there are issues of food safety, having enough to make the transportation costs worth it, delivering items that the food bank can actually use, and a host of others. One of the things we have going for us is that our food management company, Bon Appétit, also is committed to green initiatives.

(visit www.bamco.com/website/responsibility.html) Following a meeting with our committee, the local Bon Appétit management provided us with a list of conditions under which we could deliver leftovers outside the office. Essentially it involves the food service company handling leftovers in a safe manner, inspecting it the next day, and packaging it for delivery --all in the interest of food safety.

So with the supply side concerns understood, we needed to find a food bank that could accept our leftovers. After some research, we found one about two miles from our office and invited the senior staff for lunch at the Google office to discuss an outlet for our leftovers. Over the phone we could tell they were a little reluctant, but when they saw the professional food handling staff, they were convinced that food safety would not be an issue. In fact, their greatest need was to supply protein in their bags of groceries because most donations to food banks are canned veggies and non-protein items. That works well because many of our leftovers are reasonable amounts of chicken, pork, beef, and even vegetarian protein - items that can be frozen in individual portions and handed out with the sacks of groceries depending on the client's taste.

So here is what a normal food day might look like in the Google Phoenix office.  The cook arrives about 10:30am to set out the day's lunch items. At that time the leftovers from the day before are either packaged for delivery to the food bank, put in the compost buckets, or thrown out (if not appropriate for the first two options). At lunch a volunteer (who gets a front parking spot for the day) runs the leftovers to the food bank - maybe a 20 minute round trip. After lunch service is over, the leftovers are put in a large refrigerator. At the end of the day, Googlers are encouraged to grab some for dinner or to take home.

So what do the numbers look like? We asked the maintenance man to weigh the cafeteria trash for several weeks. During those weeks we averaged 63 pounds of trash; this included plate scrapings, napkins, bones, and stuff that wasn't safe to give away or compost. During those same weeks we averaged 74 pounds delivered to the food bank and 30 pounds composted. The food that Googlers took home was not weighed, but at least 4 people per week took food home. Considering that most of this recovered food would have been discarded before our waste-reduction initiative, we feel we are making good progress.

Where do we go from here? Since the program began, the cooks have been tweaking the amounts delivered, and we have found modest improvements in several areas. For example, we got smaller containers to deliver lesser amounts of meat to the food bank - they tell us they will take whatever good quality meat we bring regardless of quantity. Previously if there were half a dozen pork chops they might have been tossed. Now they are saved for the food bank. We also are looking into catching plate scraps for composting and even composting napkins. To date we have composted over 400 pounds of the easily collected foodstuffs - our red worms and composting microbes are working hard to keep up -- but that's another story.

We hope that our efforts will provide others with ideas for improving food use in their settings. If not in precisely the same way, then in the spirit that there are several options and it is important to keep looking until you find something that works - if not perfectly, then at least an improvement over the existing waste situation.