In its first phase, Phoenix鈥檚 Project REDUCE helped 9 restaurants keep more than 30,000 pounds of food waste out of landfills. The city鈥檚 Office of Environmental Programs is now offering micro-grants of up to $2,000 to locally-owned downtown restaurants.
According to project lead Kailey Mullis, Project REDUCE is helping restaurants to implement sustainable practices and to lessen financial barriers, like composting costs. 鈥淲e understand that food waste is one of the major contributors to GHG emissions,鈥� said Mullis. 鈥淎nd we also know that Arizona is one of the highest ranked for producing food waste, so we understand that there鈥檚 definitely a need there. But the cost savings is huge for restaurants, so it’s a win-win.鈥�
Phase 2 of Project REDUCE, she said, is designed around what worked well in the first one to help more restaurants tailor a food waste production plan to their own needs. 鈥淚t could be a waste tracking process to inform their production or their menu planning and inventory management,鈥� Mullis said.