I often eat at Tender Greens, a restaurant that serves only locally grown, organic food. It’s as close to farm to table as I can fine, and the food always tastes like it. Simple platters of vegetables, produce, meats and fish. None of the ingredients or processed or preserved.
When they recently announced they were cashless, I cheered. Apparently enough other people were asking about it that they had to put progressively more explanatory signs explaining the decision up around the restaurant.
No more cash! It’s the future—everyone’s doing it! It will be faster! Money is dirty! (To some people, both literally and figuratively).
But my favorite reason: If you are a business that takes cash, you have to drive that cash somewhere. Being cashless reduces their transportation costs.
“It’s cleaner and better for the environment because there will be no armored trucks picking up and dropping off cash, no more plastic deposit bags, and no paper for cash deposit slips.”
Money is no longer green.
It may seem little—we all know that in order to get the environment back on course correct mode, we have to do a lot of big things. I’m not one of those people who thinks it’s already too late—but I do see the urgency in needing to take lot of actions right now.
It’s not just getting more people to recycle—-It’s changing the way we do business.
If every business really focused on how to reduce the amount of time and energy its spends transporting products, people, and, yes, money—we could probably make some inroads quickly.
***
Jonathan Levy, a writer for The Good Men Project, carries a cup, a cloth napkin and a pair of chopsticks around everywhere. This way he never has to use either paper or plastic.
He’s the Zero-Waste Guy.
Not only is Environmental Activism, something he believes in, it’s part of his identity.
“We’re cashless!”, the signs at Tender Greens said cheerfully.
They were happy to have an environmentally friendly decision a part of their identity too.
***
In my ideal city of the future, not only would restaurants be cashless, paperless, and plastic-less—but there would be ‘vertical farms’ so that enough food as possible could be delivered there without transportation costs. Imagine, for example, if all the vegetables for a restaurant were grown on the floor above it.
How would your future look? Submit your vision here.
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