Ocean Friendly Restaurants - Ocean Minded eating
Plastic pollution is harming our oceans and the marine life that calls it home. Researchers found out that there are now over 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic in the oceans. Shockingly, this number is rising every day instead of getting lower. This pollution is impacting our marine ecosystems and wildlife, such as fishes, seabirds, dolphins, seals, whales and turtles. Most of the times those plastic fragments are even displacing plankton at the base of the food chain. Those animals end up eating the plastics and through fishing it ends up in our own food chain.
So what’s the best way to combat this global epidemic facing our oceans? It’s simple: we need to stop the problem at its source! One of the great non-profit organizations we partner with, The Surfrider Foundation, has started their Ocean Friendly Restaurants (OFR) program which does just that. Accredited Ocean Friendly Restaurants increases awareness, drive change in behavior and ultimately create measurable impact to reduce our plastic footprint as a society.
Surfrider’s OFR program highlights restaurants that pledge to meet an ocean friendly standard. One of the main goals of the OFR program is the elimination or a significant reduce in plastic waste. Especially expanded polystyrene (EPS) foam, a type of plastic typically used for inexpensive, disposable products (cups, plates, ‘clamshells,’ etc.).
The Surfrider Foundation’s OFR provides restaurants with a registration process that has been vetted by a variety of stakeholders, Surfrider representatives, business groups and government agencies. The OFR program was started by the Surfrider Foundation San Diego County Chapter in 2015 and has grown to over 200+ restaurants nationwide. It is currently available for restaurants and other food service providers and participating partners will not even only pledge Ocean Friendly to their customers, they become hands on coastal defenders in their communities.
We are stoked to partner with such a great organization and are looking forward to welcome more and more restaurants to this great program in the future.
Learn more: https://www.surfrider.org/programs/ocean-friendly-restaurants