Saving Money, Saving the Earth

Ritu Primlani has always been passionate about preserving the environment. But it was not until 1998 that she made it her business, founding a nonprofit organization with the mission of providing environmental outreach to the ethnic community.

Berkeley-based Thimmakka's Resources for Environmental Education, in conjunction with the Greening Ethnic Restaurants project, helps ethnic restaurants become more environmentally friendly and earn "green" certification.

"It's time for us to take care of our mother, the earth," Primlani, Thimmakka's founder, says.

Only two green-certified restaurants existed in the state of California when she established the program in 2002, Primlani says.

Since then, Primlani, her small staff and a slew of partners, including the East Bay Municipal Utility District, Waste Management of Alameda County and the Food Service Technology Center, have helped more than 80 restaurants earn their green certification, she says.

As part of the program, restaurants learn how to conserve water and energy, minimize solid waste, and prevent pollution at low or no cost.

"What we do is we save restaurants money by saving the environment," Primlani says.

Under the guidelines for the project, restaurants are given a list of recommendations of ways they can help the environment. Most are told to change light fixtures and install pre-spray nozzles in sinks to conserve water, and are taught to practice efficient recycling and composting. Disposable items such as paper napkins are exchanged for nondisposable ones, like cloth napkins, when possible.

The environmentally friendly changes often relieve the financial burden of overhead costs, she says.

Lachu Moorjani, owner of Ajanta, an Indian restaurant in North Berkeley, says following the project's guidelines have saved his restaurant approximately $400 per month.

"It's like having your cake and being able to eat it too-how can you go wrong?" Moorjani says. "You save the environment and you save money."

For struggling businesses like Southside's Nabolom Bakery, a worker-owned cooperative and the project's greenest member, the savings are significant.

"It's a few hundred dollars a year, which for us, being right on the brink, is quite significant," says co-owner Jim Burr.

Restaurants are responsible for one-fifth of the waste in the state's landfills, Primlani says.

But most of the time, more than 80 percent of a restaurant's solid waste can be diverted to recycling and composting, she says.

Primlani estimates that by 2007, the project's first 44 restaurants will have conserved enough water to give every Berkeley resident two bathtubs' worth of water and enough energy to run the average American home for 96 years.

But the majority of the changes come without much effort from the restaurants themselves, Primlani says.

"They can close their eyes, and we'll do all the running around," Primlani says, referring to Thimmakka and its partners.

Most participating restaurants receive the program's services-a $5,000 cost-for free, she says.

The project's initial funding came from the San Francisco Foundation, a nonprofit community organization aiming to support charitable activities throughout the Bay Area.

Current funding comes from awards the project has won over the past couple of years, Primlani says.

In 2003-04, Primlani has received a National Volvo For Life Award for $10,000, as well as an Ashoka Fellowship, which provides her with $165,000 over the next three years to help her focus on leading social change.

Primlani says the funding will help her with her new goal-bringing California's current count of 82 green restaurants to 200 by 2006.

"My goal is really to get every single restaurant certified green in the United States, and then of course internationally," Primlani says.

But Primlani isn't daunted by the scope of what she is trying to do.

"It's like Margaret Mead said: Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has," she says.

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