By John Charles Meyer, Executive Director, Plastic Free Restaurants

PlasticFreeRestaurants.org is a 100% volunteer-run non-profit with a singular mission: eliminating single-use plastic from restaurants and school cafeterias by subsidizing the purchase of reusable foodware replacements. We opened our doors in 2020 and have since eliminated 9.2 million single-use plastic items from the waste stream by helping switch 69 restaurants and 34 schools in ten states to reusable foodware .

Here are three things we’ve learned from launching and running a reuse non-profit.

One: Giving away free money is hard

This seems laughable, but it has absolutely proven true for our organization. Essentially, what we do is pay people to stop using plastic. And yet the number of restaurants and school cafeterias we have subsidized to date is dwarfed by the number of places that have contacted us and then failed to complete a relatively simple application process.

Why is this? Well, for starters, we quickly learned that the cost of reusable foodware is not the number one hurdle for restaurants and schools to clear; it is the number three hurdle.

The first hurdle is change. We constantly hear, “This is how we’ve done things since we opened” or “…since Covid” or “…for the past 30 years,” and with those statements comes the fear that switching to reusables will require changes to staffing, inventory, storerooms, kitchen layout, and more.

Assuaging these fears – first and foremost by pointing out that virtually every school and restaurant that has made the switch to reusables has saved money, even after factoring in additional labor, water, and electricity costs – is a big part of what we do. Even armed with the knowledge that their kitchens will save money, subsidy applicants frequently fail to follow through. Sometimes it boils down to bureaucracy; a school might need sign-off from a Nutrition Services Director, a Facilities Director, a cafeteria workers’ union, and a principal. Sometimes it’s as simple as kitchens being disorganized or under-resourced and unable to pull together their most recent three months of invoices for single-use plastic purchases (which we require for purposes of confirming validity of the need and calculating impact).

The second-biggest hurdle is lack of existing dishwashing infrastructure. It is estimated that only 65% of America’s public schools have a dishwasher in their cafeterias. Our organization has neither the funds nor the mandate to purchase and install industrial dishwashers at schools, and the costs of doing so (which sometimes include extensive retrofitting for upgraded electrical panels, new grease traps, code requirements, etc) can easily be ten times the cost of the reusable foodware we’re supplying.

This is a tougher nut to crack. Our best move thus far seems to be piloting reuse programs at the schools that already have dishwashers, then demonstrating to the other schools in their district that doing so yields positive outcomes for budget, student enthusiasm (not to mention student health), reduced food waste, and radically reduced garbage volumes.

It is a slow grind, but there is good news from outside sources. The state of California just passed a budget earmark that set aside $15M explicitly for grants of up to $40,000 for public schools to purchase, install, and retrofit for cafeteria dishwashers. Some other states also have grant funds available to schools for similar equipment upgrades and purchases. Also, our organization is working on a partnership with a major dishwashing machine manufacturer that will (hopefully) result in free installation of a dishwasher purchased by any public school in the United States that is subsidized by Plastic Free Restaurants. At a small school that doesn’t require any kitchen retrofits, this could cut the up-front cost of a dishwasher by nearly 50%.

The best news about our work is that small amounts of money go a shockingly long way. Just $28 of stainless steel forks wipes out more than 5,000 single-use plastic forks from a school cafeteria every school year. You can’t get two cocktails in LA for 28 bucks, but you can be responsible for keeping 75 pounds of plastic forks out of a landfill. That’s pretty easy to get people excited about.

A contribution of just $3,700 is sufficient to outfit a 400-lunch-per-day public school with stainless steel forks, spoons, trays, and cups, eliminating more than a quarter-million single-use plastic items per school year. Just sayin’.

Two: A squeaky wheel on the inside is your best asset

We speak to, and get approached by, a lot of enthusiastic local non-profits and “zero waste” groups. In our early days, I hedged a bit when these groups asked if they could send “hundreds” of their area restaurants our way; we were young and had small coffers, and I was afraid of making funding promises we couldn’t keep. I’ve since learned to confidently challenge such groups to “bring it on.” This is because only two such organizations have brought more than two successful subsidy applicants to our door in three years’ time.

Why? Well, they’re outside groups. It’s possible that some of them may be making sloppy pitches, or badgering restaurant managers at inopportune times (read: dinner rush), or relying too heavily on scolding or environmental alarmism as tactics. But the bigger problem seems to simply be that they’re not actually employed by, or managing, the kitchens they’re pitching. A public school with a food services director, or teacher, or even a noisy parent who cares about this issue is a school that is much more likely to make it to the reusable foodware finish line.

I should note here that the majority of our restaurant subsidy recipients have actually been funneled to us by our non-profit partners at ReThink Disposable, so we don’t have the same level of anecdotal data on the need or usefulness of a squeaky wheel at for-profit establishments. That said, I suspect that it is often much the same story.

The last thing I want to do here is dissuade passionate volunteers within our ranks from marching into their local schools and restaurants to tell them about the availability of subsidies for reusable foodware, or simply to encourage them to stop using disposables. But I do feel strongly that the passionate insider is the golden ticket; if a volunteer isn’t finding that passion in conversations with a contact at a restaurant, then the best move might be to try the restaurant next door.

Three: Delegation and streamlining are key to growth and sanity

Thanks to a board member employed by the company, we were blessed with six weeks of pro bono consulting work from the Boston Consulting Group earlier this year. They pointed out a lot of things we were doing inefficiently, starting with delegation.

Our Board of Directors is full of passionate, dedicated people who believe in this project. But I was not initially asking enough of them. We now have four Board committees meeting monthly to discuss plans, delegate tasks, and filter results down to our sole (volunteer) “staff member” – me. This has yielded fantastic new ideas, greater engagement, and better results.

Where tasks can be automated, embrace the opportunity. Where software or services may have been ignored over cost fears, make certain that they’re not offered for free or reduced rates to 501c3 non-profits. Where one-time donors, or annual donors, can be converted to monthly or quarterly recurring donors, give yourself the breathing room of baseline revenue expectations. Where you have help available to you, accept it.

The bottom line is this: the challenges we found in running a non-profit at the start are not going to get any easier as we grow—unless we change how we’re tackling them. This shift in our modus operandi is still very much a work in progress, but every bit of streamlining yields better results, less work, and a more sane Executive Director.

We’re very proud of our accomplishments, but we have a long way to go. There are 98,000 public schools and nearly a million restaurants in the United States. I’m not sure of its provenance, but one of my favorite sayings is:

“How do you eat an elephant?”

“One bite at a time.”

With a reusable fork, we might add ; ). Thanks to John Charles Meyer, executive director of Plastic-Free Restaurants for penning this article.