Why San Francisco is spending $200,000 on dishware for restaurants

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Que Chulada in the Richmond District recently received a set of reusable dishes and cups from the San Francisco Environment Department to replace disposable ones being used for dine-in orders.

Que Chulada restaurant co-owner Maritza Castillo looks into the dining room from the kitchen while her daughter, Allyson, doodles. The Richmond District restaurant received a grant from the city of San Francisco to replace single-use items with reusable plates, glasses and silverware.

Maritza Castillo, co-owner of Mexican restaurant Que Chulada in the Richmond District, reaches for a paper plate for a to-go order. The restaurant recently got a grant to purchase reusable food ware, like plates, glasses and silverware, for dine-in customers.

A growing San Francisco program aims to reduce landfill waste and help restaurants save money with the help of a few new plates and cups.

Since 2021, 120 restaurants have participated in the city's commercial reuse program, receiving $24,500 in grants and diverting thousands of pounds of waste. Now, the San Francisco Environment Department, the city agency working on environmental protection and policy, is expanding the program to reach a yearly 200 restaurants still using throwaway food ware to serve dine-in customers.

The program offers grants of up to $500 per business to cover the costs of buying reusable food ware and related equipment, like bus carts and bins. The move is a means to help achieve San Francisco's 2021 Climate Action Plan, which set a goal of halving landfill waste by 2030.

City staff have conducted case studies from past grant recipients, finding cost savings around $3,000 per restaurant after labor incurred from adopting reusables, such as washing dishes, and around 1,500 pounds of waste diverted in a year. Chinatown's House of Dim Sum saw an outsize effect, saving net costs of $33,561 and reducing its landfill waste by 7 tons.

Single-use items are ubiquitous in San Francisco, said San Francisco Environment Department acting Director Tyrone Jue. The COVID-19 pandemic increased the use of disposable items due to fear of transmission and as takeout became a lifeline for restaurants. "People use them at home, when getting takeout or even eating in a restaurant," Jue said. "It's impossible to quantify the exact number (of items used), but we’re starting with the low-hanging fruit."

Maritza Castillo, co-owner of Mexican restaurant Que Chulada, in the Richmond District is among the local restaurateurs replacing disposable food ware for reusable items. The restaurant received a $500 grant from a S.F. Environment Department program.

Food ware made from Styrofoam and other nonrecyclable, non-compostable materials has been banned in San Francisco since 2017, and food accessories made of plastic, like coffee stirrers and toothpicks, have been banned since 2019 (though single-use plastic straws can be available to people with disabilities upon request). Yet even single-use items that are recyclable or compostable can still be wasteful, explained Katherine Baird, associate director of sustainability at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business. Many cities don't have the infrastructure to break down compostables, and they might just end up in the landfill where they can't properly break down. Plus, moving to reusables offers a way to curb the impact from the mass manufacturing of single-use products.

"The most significant portion of an environmental footprint is how (a product) is made, not just if it's compostable, recyclable or going into a landfill," Baird said.

The commercial reuse program began in 2018 in collaboration with ReThink Disposable, a program from environmental nonprofit Clean Water Action to prevent the use of disposable food packaging. It started with a test run at restaurants in District Seven, which includes the West Portal and Park Merced neighborhoods. Now with $200,000 in regular Environment Department funding from waste-collection fees, the program will be able to reach 400 restaurants over the next two years.

Que Chulada in the Richmond District is one of them. Co-owners Maritza Castillo and Salvador Cervantes opened just less than a year ago but have already developed a group of lunch regulars who stop by for slow-braised carnitas and dripping birria quesadillas. On a midweek stop, neighbors bit into big burritos and crispy potato tacos while Castillo and Cervantes’ daughter Alysson doodled by the register.

Castillo used to serve her saucy chicken enchiladas, made with a family recipe from Guanajuato, plus the usual sides of rice and beans, on paper plates. Now, she plates them neatly on new oval dishes.

The San Francisco Environment Department recommended new plates, glasses, mugs, silverware and busing gear, like a cart and bins, for Que Chulada, a restaurant in the Richmond District, to replace its one-time-use plates and cups.

"The enchiladas are pretty good, but they look even better, and bigger, on actual plates," Castillo said.

Some items like burritos and tacos still come in reusable plastic baskets with a throwaway sheet of wax paper.

Restaurants can't just choose whatever plates they want: Environment Department staff perform an assessment of their needs and recommend what reusables may work best. At Que Chulada, program staff recommended new plates, glasses, mugs, silverware and busing gear, like a cart and bins.

Que Chulada received its complete set three weeks ago, so it hasn't had time to track how much the reusable food ware has reduced its waste or spending on disposables. However, Castillo said that its garbage pickups have gone down from three to two per week, saving money almost immediately. She says a box of 480 paper plates, around $80, lasted the restaurant about a week. The restaurant still uses some disposables for takeout orders, which account for 20% of its transactions.

The commercial reuse program is among a few others around the Bay Area looking to reduce single-use waste coming from restaurants. Environmental nonprofit Surfrider Foundation offers an Ocean Friendly Restaurant certification for restaurants using only reusables and meeting other related criteria. (Twelve San Francisco restaurants are enrolled in the program.) Back in 2019, Bay Area chain Blue Bottle Coffee announced its intent to do away with paper cups, but ultimately shelved the plan after the pandemic.

Reach Mario Cortez: [email protected]