Total Read Time: 3 Minutes

Yesterday Danielle and I headed on out to downtown Rochester for a Eco-Tuesday event. For those of you who aren’t familiar with EcoTuesday, it is a small but quickly growing community of eco-conscious business men and women. They started about two years ago with the goal of bringing together forward thinkers and people who are proactive about creating a healthier environment. Their presence can be found across the nation every fourth Tuesday of the month.  At the events, people get together to network and share stories.

Yesterday’s event was hosted at Mind Body and Spirit, a health food and sustainable restaurant which just opened this past year and has already been a big hit with the locals. We had the opportunity to take a tour of the building and speak to some of the employees about the building’s unique features.

The first part of the building we visited was the greenhouse. They grow all of their own herbs, peppers, tomatoes and a couple of other greens in a moderately sized greenhouse right off one of the main roads. It has a ventilation system that open and closes automatically so optimal conditions are met for the plants. To water the plants, there is a giant rain barrel which collects rain water from the roof, which is filtered, and they have yet to run out of available rain water for their plants. There are also giant tubes of stagnant water and a large cinder block wall filled with cement that holds in heat from the sun in the winter to keep the room warm. This is a great example of passive solar design at work.  One of my favorite items though was a giant composting machine that accelerates the composting process.  Any food scrapes from customer’s plates or the kitchen are added to the machine every day.  The machine accelerates the process so within 15 hours you have usable compost that local farmers and employees have first dibs on.

Then we went outside to talk about the building’s other green features. All of the decking was a composite mix of wood and recycled plastic. The floors were all made out of cork. While some of the tables were actually constructed out of crushed sunflower seed husks or sawdust and mixed with non-toxic glues.  They looked great too.  I should also mention the building is 100 years old and that much of the building’s foundation and some of it’s interiors were reused for the restaurant.  Items such as the marble floor in the entrance way and large pillars were refurbished and the original crown molding was repurposed to change pictures.

After the tour we had a change to meet others involved in different sustainable industries.  One such person was a permaculture designer, meaning he designs sustainable landscapes (yards, walkways, gardens, forests, etc). We also had a chance to sample some of Mind Body and Spirit’s entrees, which were very tasty.  Eventually we found our way back to one of the tour guides and discussed the geothermal design the restaurant implmented and how involved the process really is (details will be in a later post). They went with the vertical approach which involves drilling 200-250 below ground. They are so confident in their investment that they don’t actually have a furnace or an air conditioner!

Cool Company Policies:
1. Servers and other employees get hired more so on their enthusiasm for eco-friendliness and organic living than years of experience. The idea is that you can train just about anyone to wait on tables but teaching a lifestyle is much more difficult.
2. Approximately 40% of the restaurant’s waste is food and everything but the bones is put into the composter. Approximately 40% of the materials they use gets recycled. Only about 10% of all their waste actually get’s thrown out.

That’s all for now. We’ll keep you posted on where the next local Eco-Tuesday will be and if you live in the area, we’d love to see you out at the event.

-Ryan-

You should follow us on Twitter here!