Reducing Our Impact: Just Salad’s Annual Sustainability Report
This week, Just Salad released its annual environmental sustainability report announcing new steps we’re taking to eliminate waste from fast-casual dining and support the Circular Economy.
Our goal is to make food delivery and pickup zero-waste. To that end, we’re piloting a digital version of our Reusable Bowl program, the world’s largest and longest-running program of its kind. Under the pilot, now live at Just Salad’s 600 3rd Avenue location, customers can order from orderjustsalad.com in a Green Reusable Bowl and return the container to Just Salad for professional washing and sanitation. We’re offering a similar service to corporate partners through our Hub program, which provides daily delivery to offices.
Our Sustainability Report also discusses the following milestones we reached in 2020:
- Becoming the first U.S. restaurant chain to display carbon labels on its menu and offer a curated Climatarian menu featuring its lowest-emissions menu items
- Relaunching our smoothie menu with vegan ingredients and partnering with Daring™, makers of 100% plant-based chicken, to offer a second plant-based meat option in addition to Beyond Beef®
- Eliminating plastic dressing and beverage cups and launched a utensil waste reduction program on orderjustsalad.com and third-party ordering platforms
- Starting a pilot test with the zero-waste online ordering platform DeliverZero
- Rolling out a Sustainability Champion program for in-store staff and an educational Sustainability Fellowship for students
In the coming year, we’ll expand on these programs and pursue new ones, including:
- Partnering with research scientists at the University of Pennsylvania, Tulane University and Harvard University on a behavioral survey related to its carbon labels
- Reducing food waste through a pilot with the surplus food app Too Good To Go
While COVID has presented its challenges over the past year, we continue to regard environmental sustainability as non-optional. As we write in the report’s opening letter:
In 2020, our world changed but our values did not. The COVID pandemic made us more determined to create a new normal for our industry — one in which waste is taboo, reusables are taken for granted, and doing ‘less bad’ is not good enough.
I hope that Just Salad’s sustainability report shows that even in the hardest of times — like a global pandemic — sustainability makes good business sense for restaurants. In the year ahead, we’re excited to continue delivering on our mission to make everyday health and everyday sustainability possible.
