M– USE School Kitchen Greenest Restaurant in the World

100% Plant-Based. 100% Solar. Near-Zero Waste™

Greenest Restaurant in the World Announced

The Green Restaurant Association has just announced that the M– USE School Kitchen is now the Greenest Restaurant in the World. M– USE has implemented 49 environmental steps and earned over 550 GreenPoints™ to become a 4 Star Certified Green Restaurant®. Muse has the most GreenPoints™ of any restaurant in the world.

M– USE has implemented two unusual and extraordinary steps that bring a restaurant’s environmental impact dramatically down. The first is solar. M– USE’s electricity is 100% solar. That means that the lights, AC, electric cooking equipment, refrigerators, and freezers are all powered by the sun. That is one of the ultimate goals of this industry: to derive all of its energy sources from clean generation. The restaurant industry is the largest consumer of electricity in the retail sector. M– USE is leading the way towards eliminating the negative environmental impact of this statistic.

The second extraordinary change that M– USE implemented was changing its menu to be low on the food chain, plant-based. That means no cheese, eggs, chicken, beef, or fish. NBC reported on March 22 that The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences just came out with the first study to report comprehensively on the environmental and health impact of eating low on the food chain. It finds that by 2050, if the world’s population would eat a plant-based diet, 8.1 million lives would be saved every year and 70% of the food-related emissions would be eliminated. M– USE didn’t start as a plant-based kitchen. Based on reducing the school’s environmental impact, M– USE made the decision a few years ago to slowly shift to a plant-based menu. Over an 18-month period, M– USE gradually replaced animal-based menu items with plant-based items while educating its community about the environmental benefits of a plant-based diet. This gradual change gave them the opportunity to do it well.

“M– USE School’s Kitchen has just pushed the edge of sustainability even further from vision to reality,” said Michael Oshman, CEO and Founder of the Green Restaurant Association. “I applaud M– USE’s leadership in providing a successful foodservice operation that is in concert with the oft-used word `Sustainability.’”

“This has been a dream come true,” said M– USE School Founders Suzy Amis Cameron (wife of director James Cameron) and Rebecca Amis. “This honor by the Green Restaurant Association celebrates our choice to eat and cook green at M– USE. It’s our hope to share M– USE School’s best practices with the greater restaurant community, magnifying the positive effect plant-based eating and green kitchen practices have on the environment.”

Highlights of Green Accomplishments:

100% Solar
On-site Food Production
100% Plant-Based
Full-Scale Recycling Program
Composting
High Efficiency Refrigerator
Ceiling Fan
LED Lighting
0.5 gallon-per-minute Faucet Aerators
Recycled and Reusable Products
Less Toxic Cleaning Products

To See M– USE Kitchen’s Detailed Green Label and all their environmental steps, click on: http://dinegreenco.com/customers/featured.asp?ID=REST11583

About M– USE School CA
Founded in 2006 by Suzy Amis Cameron and Rebecca Amis, M– USE School CA’s mission is to inspire and prepare young people to live consciously with themselves, one another, and the planet. Through individual and passion-based learning, M– USE students achieve academic excellence, learn self-efficacy, exercise sustainability, and become compassionate global champions. As one of the greenest schools in the United States, M– USE supports spontaneous learning on both its campuses, enticing students from Early Childhood through High School to explore, create, discover and reflect. For more information visit www.museschool.org. On Twitter @M– USESchoolCA. On Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/M– USESchoolCA/ .

About the Green Restaurant Association
The Green Restaurant Association is a national non-profit organization that provides the only official Certified Green Restaurants® mark in the country. For 25 years, the GRA has pioneered the Green Restaurant® movement and has been the leading voice within the industry encouraging restaurants to listen to consumer demand and green their operations using transparent, science-based certification standards. With their turnkey certification system, the GRA has made it easy for thousands of restaurants to become more environmentally sustainable in a profitable manner. The GRA is endorsed by scores of national environmental and business organizations. The GRA is also an Energy Star partner. In 2010, CitySearch announced the GRA as their official Green Restaurant® listing partner. The GRA has been featured on CNN, NBC Nightly News, NPR, and in The New York Times, and The Washington Post. For more information, visit www.dinegreen.com.