Founder and Executive Director of a highly innovative organization called Thimmakka's Resources for Environmental Education, Ritu Primlani has become a leading practical visionary and social entrepreneur. Through her project, Ritu has devised and implemented a program called "Thimmakka Certified Green Restaurants," which conducts environmental outreach to the restaurant industry. The program brings a particular focus on Thai, Indian, Chinese, Latin and South American, African American, Moroccan, Mediterranean, French and American style restaurants in the San Francisco Bay area of Northern California, Miami FL, and Vancouver, BC.
Businesses are among the greatest consumers and producers of resources. Restaurants, consume more energy per square foot than any other retail industry; they consume exorbitant amounts of water because of their high number of clientele and their concomitant pre-cooking and post-cooking requirements. Restaurants generate an enormous amount of solid waste (food waste alone accounts for sixteen percent of the solid waste that goes into California’s landfills, and forty percent of the solid waste in Vancouver’s landfills). Generally, restaurants can divert 83% of their solid waste into recycling and composting. But they remain polluters of oceans because of grease and oil use. Restaurants represent an underserved section of the business industry due to the preponderance of small, family-owned businesses, the ethnic diversity in industry, and the time and financial constraints upon restaurant owners. Precisely because of this difficulty of outreach, a tremendous potential for environmental savings exists. In situations where city environmental departments have failed to implement environmental regulations in ethnic communities because of language and cultural barriers, Ms. Primlani gets restaurants to comply with at least sixty environmental measures per restaurant. In the three years since she launched the program, she has signed up 140 restaurants to participate, and her organization has doubled the number of certified green business in the city of Berkeley in only one year –– making Berkeley the leading city in number of certified green businesses.
Ritu has turned a few deeply entrenched environmental myths on their head, i.e. environmentalism is for the rich; it doesn’t make business sense, and “ethnic” people don’t care for the environment. Ritu’s accomplishments overturn these myths, and the following facts give unimpeachable testimony in this regard:
-In five years, the project has diverted 11,204.58 tons of solid waste from the landfill (equivalent to 141.8 737 Jet Boeing aircraft, loaded to the maximum take off capacity of 79 tons each, or 1600 male African elephants each weighing seven tons, or 3,395.3 Asian elephants each weighing 3.3 tons)
-In five years, the initiative has saved 10,844,560.5 gallons of water (sufficient to fill 44 Olympic sized swimming pools)
-In a similar time period, the initiative has saved 940,530 Kilowatt hours of energy, and prevented 472,990.695 pounds of Carbon Dioxide from release into the atmosphere.
And the program has helped 104 restaurants save a combined 883,521.25 dollars during the past five years. Moreover, Ritu’s initiatives have reduced greenhouse gases, landfill gases that associated with cancer, asthma, and higher incidence of miscarriages. In all, the ongoing work has helped preserve clean water, the element of all life.
A rationalist in the best sense of the word, Ritu Primlani knows that prevention before cure, and system design before individual efforts, provide the strongest basis for effective, business-friendly environmentalism. Ritu has dedicated herself toward expanding city and countywide environmental solutions that not only appeal to mainstream economic concerns, but also enhance, augment, and strengthen them. She creates a win-win situation for all. Extensively published internationally, and widely honored for her innovative and life-long dedication to the environment, Ritu Primlani continues to reach out to diverse constituencies, winning new supporters to her cause. She has long since proved that environmentalism is neither an “elitist,” nor a “special interest” issue, but one that enhances business, large and small, while serving the greatest, most inclusive “special interest” of all: Humankind
To learn more about Ritu and her cause, and how you can make a difference, please visit:
www.thimmakka.org
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