Hot Tomato Goes Green

So, one of the things us Tomatoes had no idea about when we started this whole venture was just how big exactly the footprint of a restaurant is. It's pretty huge. Restaurants produce a whole ton of waste, use a lot of electricity and gas and water, and go through a ton of paper products.

All this was a bit staggering to us. I mean, we got into this to make pizza, not make waste. And yes, while were busy making a whole bunch of pizzas, we were, of course, outdoing ourselves on the waste part as well.

So, round two comes about with our new location and remodel and the first thing we did was call up our friend who does green built architectural designs (Hines Designs in Ridgeway, she's awesome!) and ask what we could do differently this time. It was extremely important for us to try the best we could to reduce our impact this go around.

Thanks to some extra hours put in by some very talented folks, and some sleuthing around on our part on green building options, we are pretty proud to say that the new incarnation of the Hot Tomato is quite a bit more friendly to this planet of ours.

We'd love to take the time to tell you a bit about what we did and who we used.

1. Solar!!!!!! The fine folks at High Noon Solar in Grand Junction installed our solar system on our roof. Since we live in the land of sunny days, and we had some good south facing exposure on our roof, it really made sense to go solar. right now our solar system accounts for about a third of our energy use.

2. SIPS panelling for our addition. We added 700 sq ft. on to the back of our building and we used all sips. For those who don't know, SIPS is short for Structurally Insulated Panels. Here's a brief explanation from the website sips.org.

Structural insulated panels (SIPs) are high performance building panels used in floors, walls, and roofs for residential and light commercial buildings. The panels are typically made by sandwiching a core of rigid foam plastic insulation between two structural skins of oriented strand board (OSB). Other skin material can be used for specific purposes. SIPs are manufactured under factory controlled conditions and can be custom designed for each home. The result is a building system that is extremely strong, energy efficient and cost effective.

3. Icynene Insulation. We used the fine folks at Hughes Insulation in Loma for our spray in foam insulation for the front half of our building (we didn't need to insulate the SIPS half). Here's a little bit about Icynene:

Why Icynene? Icynene® is a spray-in-place, light density, expanding soft foam insulation and air barrier system. It creates a superior air-seal, effectively minimizing air leakage to deliver advanced moisture control, healthy air, and energy savings of up to 50%. By minimizing random air leakage (convection)—the source of up to half of a building's energy loss—Icynene® delivers energy savings of up to 50% and minimizes the intrusion of outdoor allergens, odors and pollutants.

Icynene® helps buildings qualify for Green Building Programs such as LEED and the NGBS (National Green Building Standard).

4. Remote beer lines and No more bottled beer! I know, I know, sometimes you just want a nice bottle of beer, right? Well, we were going through so much bottled beer that it was really feeling wasteful. Yes, we recycled our glass bottles, but that doesn't account for those bottles needing to be produced in the first place, and then transported over to us. Keg systems are much more sustainable and much less wasteful. Every keg of beer produces about 100 pours, which equals 100 bottles being saved.

5. Recycled Pizza boxes; Pizza boxes account for the majority of our paper products. Thank you to Smurfit-Stone for making a recycled and non-bleached box for us to use to deliver your piping hot pizza in!

6. Beetle Kill pine for our tables and counters. Local artisan Jon Rizzo used entirely beetle kill pine salvaged from (most likely Summit County) Colorado trees to build our awesome wooden tables and wooden counters.

7. Recycled scrap metal. Both Rizzo, and another talented Fruita local Jonathan Cooley used recycled scrap metal for our patio fence, barstools, signs and sculptures, and all metal trim and artwork.

8. Local produce when in season! One of the biggest contributors to the environmental footprint of a restaurant is the transport of goods. Think about it, one day the tomatoes you are getting are coming from California, and the next they might come from Mexico. Those places are a long way from Colorado, and it takes a lot of fuel to get them here. That's why we strive during the growing season to get as much produce from local farmers as we can get. We use a number of local, organic farmers for our seasonal produce and plan on expanding our local offerings even more this year! We think it tastes better, and it makes us feel better about what we are serving to you.