Carbon Neutral, Zero Waste. Icon - A group of trees above the triple recycling arrows.

Sustainability is the central guiding principle in all that we do. As of 2019, all of our projects are carbon neutral or negative, and we are proud to be home to the first zero-waste catering company and zero-waste wine bar in the United States.

 
 

We are committed to an ongoing effort to further improve how we address and mitigate our impact as restaurant owners and operators. We approach each project by assessing it through the lens of three central pillars: sustainability, transparency, and respect — for the environment and for our employees. These central tenants flow through our food programs, our operations, and our staffing model.

 
 
Sustainability. Icon - Plant grows from open hand
 
Transparency. Icon - Two sprouts grow between an x and y axis, as if tracing an exponential graph curve
 
Respect. Icon - Two hands raise a globe
 
 

How do we get to zero? Learn more about some of our practices and processes below.

 

Carbon Neutral

We offset the entire carbon impact not only of our business, but also our entire supply chain and sourcing practices.

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The Oberon Group has partnered with Zero Food Print, an organization based in San Francisco, that helps restaurants assess their carbon footprint, and invest in carbon negative technology such as clean cookstoves and aforestation. We cover not only the carbon impact of operating the restaurant itself, but also the footprint of the supply chain required to get the products we use from their original source to our restaurant.

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Zero Waste

At our restaurant and catering company, this means we don’t send anything to the landfill. We compost, upcycle, recycle, and partner with Terracycle on any hard-to-recycle materials that we can’t handle ourselves.

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At Purslane and Rhodora, we have committed to creating zero waste — this requires that we compost, recycle, and upcycle 100% of what we purchase to make our food. This commitment is driven by the desire to keep microbes of plastic out of our food supply and the fact that 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions is due to food waste alone. We tightly plan our menu, operation, and ordering to eliminate the need for trash. We reclaim any potential waste from events and ensure all items make it to the appropriate compost, up cycling, or recycling stream and ensure any viable food is packaged for donation. The same care and thought is put into the food and items we send to your home.

At Rhodora we have addressed the issue of waste in multiple ways. Our food program is structured to create as little leftover food as possible. We have created vendor relationships that rely on closed-loop systems of delivery - i.e., our items are delivered in reusable packaging that we can pass back and forth, or compost. We insist that nothing be shipped using plastic or plastic tape, and are happy to supply out partners with paper tape that can be composted and recycled. We have partnered with EcoLogic, an innovative green cleaning company through which we have installed a cleaning system that uses no manufactured chemicals - simply electrolyzed water and salt to create an effective and safe disinfectant. We have a composter on site in order to compost any food waste that is created, and a cardboard shredder to shred our wine boxes. We add the shredded cardboard to our compost in order to speed the composting process.

We have built a beverage program with minimizing waste and maximizing sustainability in mind. We are primarily a natural wine bar - we source from small-farm, natural winemakers who practice low- or no-intervention winemaking. By featuring small-farm, natural winemakers, the Rhodora team partners with wine producers who share a similar respect for the land and environment, working against the often harmful impacts of large-scale wine manufacturing.

We offer a highly curated selection of alcohol to reduce the number of products we are bringing into our space. Our cocktail program was crafted with zero waste in mind - we have done away with unnecessary garnishes and only use citruses that are cross utilized across the rest of our program.

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Plastic Free

We use environmentally friendly alternatives to some of the biggest contributors to landfill waste, like beeswax wrap instead of plastic wrap.

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At Rhodora, we only establish relationships with purveyors who can eliminate single-use plastic from their delivery stream, and can deliver to us using recyclable or returnable materials.

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