EFA New York is a level one green certified restaurant!

Last month, EF Academy New York was honored to receive its Level 1 Green Certification from the Green Restaurant Association. Founded in 1990, the Green Restaurant Association has been a pioneering force in the restaurant industry, using transparent, science-based standards to help restaurants become more environmentally sustainable in a number of areas such as energy, water, waste, food, chemicals and disposables. 

Our fantastic dining staff have been working on achieving this qualification by meeting a number of requirements to show that our school is committed to reducing our environmental impact. Some of the standards for the Level One Certification include being 100% Styrofoam-free, cutting back on water usage in kitchen facilities, and serving foods that are certified organic. Part of our celebration of this exciting certification included a visit from a celebrity chef, Chef Jet Tila. He joined us one afternoon to prepare some recipes from his cookbook and spend time with our students, faculty and dining team.

Flik Dining Services is the company that plans, prepares and provides all of our meals here on campus. Flik provides our students with a variety of delicious food options at every meal of the day, including meat-free and plant-based options that create less carbon output on the environment. When possible, Flik sources its provisions locally–using products that are grown and made in our region–and makes an effort to serve fruits and vegetables that are “in season”. Eating food that is made locally and grown seasonally can drastically reduce our environmental footprint by cutting back on the high levels of fuel used to ship food products from other countries.

This is certainly a great step for our campus, but there are still lots of ways we can continue to improve our awareness and efforts to reduce our footprint. The next step in the “green” process is creating more awareness within our school community. In the coming months, we hope to involve more students in our progress toward campus-wide sustainability as we learn more about minimizing our impact on the world. We also look forward to starting new green initiatives such as campus-wide recycling and composting. Thank you to all who are a part of this effort to make our campus more environmentally conscious!