The Green Dining Alliance’s parent organization, St. Louis Earth Day, recently participated in the St. Louis Regional Chamber’s Green Business Challenge expo. We featured both our Recycling On the Go and Green Dining Alliance programs, encouraging Expo attendees to seek out GDA-certified members for catering services and locations for business events and meetings.
While networking at this event, we learned about an innovative (yet practical) application of the GDA restaurant listing from Nicole Smith, the Lead Public Service Representative from the Missouri History Museum. Below, she describes their creative use of the list:
“This year, the Green Committee at the Missouri History Museum started a new challenge for staff: the Summer Transportation Challenge. In the months of June, July and August they asked staff to swap driving alone to carpooling, taking public transit or carpooling once a week. If a staffer participated for a whole month, they would be entered into a drawing for a $25 gift card to one of the certified restaurants in the Green Dining Alliance. We chose the Schlafly Bottleworks and Taproom, the five Baileys’ Restaurants, and both Urban Chestnut locations from which to purchase gift cards.
“In the first year implementing the new challenge, we saw 27 staff members participate (about 20% of our employees). We plan to take on the same challenge next summer, and I am confident that double the staff will sign up for 2015!”
We welcome and encourage such creative use of our dining list and hope to see more ideas like this in the future! Giving gift certificates to GDA-certified restaurants is a great way to give a gift or award a prize that is in-line with green business practices and sustainable living.
To learn more about employee transportation challenges, Bike to Work Day (and Month) and programs to help employees try alternatives to single passenger commuting, visit Trailnet (“Shift Your Commute), Metro (“Dump the Pump”) and RideFinders.
Please contact Olivia at olivia@greendiningalliance.org if you’re looking for ways to engage your staff or community group in the green dining scene or if you’d like to share how you’ve put the list to work for you!
