Thursday, September 17, 2009
Kitchen Gear / Restaurants Forks in the Road: Nuvo Burrito Takes the Green Turn
Posted by Carrington Fox on Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 6:00 AM
This week's dining review of Nuvo Burrito, the gleaming burrito restaurant in East Nashville, praises NB's use of biodregadable cutlery and carryout boxes.
Nuvo Burrito's utensils are made of corn starch and will biodegrade in 30 to 90 days, depending on the conditions of the landfill. The carryout boxes are made with sugar cane fiber, which is biodegradable and compostable.
Co-owner Sean Perry says the company pays three times as much for these products as they would shell out for styrofoam, while the paper cups at Nuvo Burrito cost double what a similar foam product would cost. Such costs inevitably make their way to the consumer, but Nuvo Burrito's prices remain within the normal bounds for casual lunch.
As a consumer, does the shift toward biocompostable/biodegradable/post-consumer/recycled/sustainable/green products come to bear on your dining decisions?
Comments (13)
Showing 1-13 of 13
My favorite pastime is trying to do Chinese take out and manage to leave with just the containers that hold the food.
I usually have to grab my pint of fried rice off the counter and run for the door while a language challenged counter person chases me into the parking lot with a pound of napkins, paper plate, 6 forks, 9 each of soy sauce, duck sauce, and mustard, and a dozen fortune cookies. ALL of which gets shoved into the garbage the instant I arrive at home.
By the way, the Italian Market on 51st does the same thing with their take out sandwiches - all of it is recyclable paperboard.
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It sounds really nice that they use biodegradable packaging and utensils. When push comes to shove people want to get the most for their money...green or not. We need to be better stewards of our resources, but at what cost? This place can been green as hell, but if people think it's too expensive they won't go. Even the uber green among us have a bottom line. I mean hell...they got cats to feed.
Great for them. Bad for the consumer b/c the cost DOES get passed down to the consumer. Also, the food is not that great. Compare the NON GREEN Baja Burrito to the GREEN Nuvo Burrito and I will pick Baja 8 days a week.
Wonder how much energy it takes to create a 'Green' cup vs. a traditional paper or Styrofoam cup...
I've wondered that too, TTG. But I think until "green" is the new infrastructure, i.e., the default choice with enough volume to bring down the price, we should applaud any retail establishment's willingness to work harder and spend more to be green.
"This place can been green as hell, but if people think it's too expensive they won't go. Even the uber green among us have a bottom line. "
The ridiculous success of Whole Foods would seem to suggest otherwise.
Arguably, the savings on non-biodegradable packaging are counterbalanced by the back-end cost of disposal. While the cost is less to the consumer up front, it is more in the long run.
The Gnome raises a good point in that we do not know what sort or how much energy is used in manufacture of these items. That they are more expensive to purchase implies non-usage of popular and/or subsidized non-green resources.
The problem lies in totaling the columns and determining what sort of net gain there is, if any.
Green is almost always better than non green and Sean and his team are to be commended for making the extra effort to do what is right. Breakdown in 60-90 days? That has to be much better than the alternative yes?
On the surface, yes, if one assumes that manufacture of the biodegradables doesn't consume a whole heaping amount more of non-green resources.
I'm not knocking the NUVO crew for doing this or not being able to get all the information to do the daunting math. It's similar to the quandry of buying organic produce grown in South America or locally-grown non-organic.
At the end of the day an out of business "Green" company is still out of business. Whole foods is a joke on the green movement. Huge store with overpriced items. It's an energy hog from top to bottom. It's just in style now. Don't worry...it will fade. Much like global warming.
At the end of the day an out of business "Green" company is still out of business. Whole foods is a joke on the green movement. Huge store with overpriced items. It's an energy hog from top to bottom. It's just in style now. Don't worry...it will fade. Much like global warming.
At the end of the day an out of business "Green" company is still out of business. Whole foods is a joke on the green movement. Huge store with overpriced items. It's an energy hog from top to bottom. It's just in style now. Don't worry...it will fade. Much like global warming.
"The carryout boxes are made with sugar cane fiber, which is biodegradable and compostable."
You mean like paper?
I tree that grows until it dies, falls over and biodegrades into dirt. It's the circle of life.
A paper box is either recycled or it goes into the landfill where it biodegrades into dirt.
"Green" doesn't always have to cost more.
