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What does sustainability in the 21st century look like? That's what we're exploring this week with Sandra Noonan, Chief Sustainability Officer at Just Salad. From innovative sourcing solutions to carbon labels on the menu, hear how Sandra is driving Just Salad towards zero-waste dining and making the fast-casual restaurant industry climate-conscious.
We interview sustainability leaders across industries to learn what they are working on and how they are steering their companies toward a climate-friendly world.
OSS - Just Salad
Alex: Well, welcome Sandra. Thank you for joining the Open Source Sustainability Podcast. We are super excited to have you. I've obviously been following what y'all have been doing in sustainability for years. I think it's super, super interesting. I know y'all are constantly kind of testing the limits of, of what kind of the future of food and food service looks like, especially in ways that pertain to being able to be succeed without the expense of the planet.
So we're really excited for the chance to learn more and talk some about some of the things you're doing, but maybe just to kind of. Tell us a little bit about your role, within Just Salad and kind of how everything kind of pertains to sustainability.
Sandra: Sure. Nice to be here, Alex. So I'm Sandra Noonan. My official title is Chief Sustainability Officer at Just Salad. My role consists of, in the largest sense, I would say, reducing resource use and maximizing resource efficiency at our company. And as a company that sources produce and multiple fresh ingredients and serves healthy food in packaging, there are many, many opportunities to function as a modern, sustainable enterprise that we need to, pursue to the fullest extent, especially as our ecological crisis accelerates. So there is always an opportunity to do better.
Alex: So when you, when you say resources and managing resources, what are the bounds here? Because we talk to people who could say, you know, the, the sustainability restaurant is, is just the energy usage. Sometimes it's, it's the packaging. Sometimes it's the food. Like what is the bounds at which you cover when you really think about the, the resources that you manage, especially as it pertains to sustainability?
Sandra: One wig would be to think about it in terms of the greenhouse gas protocol, and scope one, two, and three emissions. If you wanna get technical about it, so it, it's everything from the electricity you draw from the grid to weigh on the scope three side of the spectrum to the crops you're pulling out of the ground and the, the resources that are going into the soil to cultivate the crops that you're sourcing for your supply chain and ultimately feeding to your customers.
And I, I say this quite seriously. I mean, because it, it does sound so far-fetched for maybe a more conventional company, but for us, you know, when even looking at packaging, we think about the entire life cycle impact of our packaging. And so yeah, we put very, very, very big bounds on, our resource use as a company. And I think that is a 21st century way of looking at things and we have to embrace that.
Alex: You mentioned like crops coming outta the ground. you're a restaurant, right? So, so you're just serving food at, at this part of the supply chain. How is your responsibility intertwined with the way food is produced back where you source things like how, why is that your responsibility and not somebody else's?
Sandra: I think it's not solely our responsibility, but it is our responsibility to think about, how our food has grown. And so, for example, let's look at just one ingredient, say rice. Rice accounts for 12% of the world's methane emissions. rice farming is a methane, generating practice because you typically will flood a rice patty with water. And those standing pools of water are "fertile grounds" for methane and
Alex: Really?
Sandra: Yeah. And so Rice has been identified by, you know, everyone from Project Drawdown to, you know, John Doerr's new book Speed and Scale as one of the areas we need to look at in thinking about how to make, our food system more, climate smart. So we serve rice, not Just Salad. That has always been in the back of my mind that rice is one of these practices we can modernize to be more climate smart.
So we found a rice farmer in Missouri who was practicing no flood farming. He had this regenerative farming epiphany, years ago when his rice fields suffered from a major drought. and he looked at his soil and it was not healthy and so we made contact with him. His name is Johnny Hunter. He runs Castro River Farms and his no flood practices have restored the health of his soil.
He's a member of the sustainable rice platform and we're rolling out his, rice at Just Salads across our, across all our locations, and I feel very good about that. And so that's what I mean by taking responsibility for your ingredients and how they're grown. When we find opportunities like that, we look at them very seriously and partner with, with the supplier we believe in.
Alex: I'm very curious because, you know, sustainability, especially at a restaurant is spanning so many things. Not only do you have kind of like the different pieces of it, do you. You know, energy and gas and your utilities, you've got your entire supply chain and y'all, you'll have lots of different ingredients and lots of places to look.
How do you manage your time when you think about prioritization, like how do you wake up at the beginning of the year and set your goals and say, this is where I'm gonna go look and, and go find what you do? Like what is like your process look like at Just Salad?
Sandra: It evolves. I think I think about it in terms of buckets and also areas where we excel as a brand and as a company given our history.
So for example, on the packaging and waste bucket, I am going to always be involved in maximizing the benefits of our reusable Bowl program. so this this guy is unique to Just Salad. It's a program that you, we reward you free food for coming in with our reusable container and keeping waste out of landfills.
And also, by the way, that reusable container reduces carbon emissions and water use after just a few uses versus disposable containers. So, sorry to digress a little bit there. That is a huge part of my portfolio because it's a huge differentiator for our brand, and it's something we believe in a circular, model for packaging, and we're trying to prove that out.
So in packaging and waste, I spend a lot of time in our reasonable program and showing, trying to show our industry how this radical approach can actually scale. And then on sourcing, you could drive yourself crazy looking at every single ingredient, but you wanna focus on the highest impact ingredients, plus where there are opportunities to find great solutions.
So the rice example was one, protein is another, dairy is another. You wanna look at, those are the ingredients that are, are you're either spending the most on given how much volume you source, and or they are the highest emission, most emissions intensive ingredients. So that's, you wanna prioritize high impact plus opportunity. Where does the opportunity exist?
And then on energy, for example, just take one more on our consumption of energy at the store level. We are looking first at efficiency, efficiency, efficiency. And then you can get into projects beyond that. But it's, the hierarchy is like reduce, right? And then you can pursue these other, other things once you've reduced your footprint.
Alex: It's really remarkable what y'all have been able to build. I think, a lot of restaurants we talked to are, are certainly not quite at the level that Just Salad is. This had to start somewhere, like, where did this begin?
Like where is the first step for people and how can, if I'm a hospitality company or even a business and I wanted to get started in this stuff, what is the first thing that somebody does to step into this space? Like, or to, to start to look at their, their footprint or operating in a more sustainable way?
Sandra: So I can't claim to have an, a solution or, a playbook for every restaurant given their unique circumstances and supply chains. But what I can say is where you, where you probably don't want to start is in the world of greenwashing. And to elaborate on that a little bit, it's easier for me to answer that, that question by pointing out what is wrong, not only with our industry, but with a lot of consumer facing industries today, which is this reliance on solutions that are not really solutions.
So coming into Just Salad, the example of that was "biodegradable packaging".
Alex: you see that everywhere. That's everywhere that I go, has "biodegradable packaging".
Sandra: So restaurants really need to stop perpetuating, to the extent they are, they need to stop perpetuating the myth of biodegradability.
As someone once said to me, A car is biodegradable in the long run. everything is biodegradable in the long run. We shouldn't be solving for biodegradability. We should be solving for reducing our resource use. So compostable packaging is not an adequate way to address environmental issues today.
Composters often don't accept compostable packaging. They landfill it, we call them, they tell us this. And so that is the wrong place to start. I think that, I would not advise, give this broad statement of what restaurants should do, but what I think we should not be doing is pursuing solutions that, that just don't hold up when you subject them to scrutiny.
So where does that leave you? You could seek packaging that as a higher percentage of recycled content. You could try to find a composter that does compost packaging. You could try to educate your consumers and say, Hey, we're gonna reward you for maybe bringing in a reusable cup, and so on and so forth.
Alex: Got it. Makes so much sense. Now y'all have this concept of, of zero waste dining. Tell us about what that means? Like what is, what is that, and, and how do you, how should somebody understand what that is?
Sandra: So the idea of zero waste dining centers on our reusable bowl program. Extending upon or expanding upon what I was just saying, we want to forge this new paradigm where you can eat conveniently and fast, but not engage in the act of disposal. I think, you know, I come to my job every day with this conviction that waste is a design flaw of our culture and our society. It's a choice that humans have made.
We are unique among 10 million species and producing, four pounds of single use waste every day per capita, at least in the US. We have made the choice to be a society that couples consumption with disposal. And I think that our planet cannot really abide that given, given our population growth, and the limits of our, of our planet to tolerate this amount of waste. It's ending up in water and our bodies and our, and embryos and lots of things that are really, really scary to contemplate.
So I just went really far field of your question, but zero waste dining, you know, situating it within this larger philosophical discussion is, is a statement that our convenience culture can be one that is more sustainable and doesn't generate waste as kind of a reflex. So our reusable bowl program seeks to break that paradigm.
Alex: Makes sense. And, and, we had a, one of our last guests was, was a sustainability at Taco Bell, and that was a, that was a big focus, from hers and that was something that she was trying to think about over the course of the next five or 10 years. And it kind of seems like, particularly in the QSR space, how to figure out how to operate in that environment, in a convenience environment without what's been so typically common of it is, is a challenge that everybody's trying to face.
Sandra: Yeah, I just think that convenience in the 21st century has to be different than convenience in the 20th century, and convenience in the 20th century was like, this is fast, is cheap, let me chuck the waste in the garbage. Now everything's gonna be fine. I, I just think we need to evolve.
Alex: Yep. Makes total sense. So I think, one of the, my favorite questions is, is kind of trying to get at something that people maybe not know about out the brand. So what is something that you wish Just Salad customers knew about some of the work that y'all are doing? Like something that maybe, maybe the average customer doesn't know, but you find to be, you know, incredibly interesting?
Sandra: Well, I, I think I've stood on my compostable packaging soapbox long enough in this conversation. So beyond that, I would say that I think we're a quietly radical brand where you don't necessarily see how passionately we care about systems change when you walk into the store. But if you're, if you're really paying attention, you might.
So I guess one thing I'd point out is, you know, in our mobile app, we carbon label every single one of our salads. And that is carbon label is displayed right next to calories, and that is another indication of how we want to be a little more radical and, around disclosing what impact our food has. So we don't believe in just calorie, you know, providing a calorie label. We also believe in this planetary health label, which is the carbon label, and we've painstakingly quantified the carbon footprint of every ingredient on our menu.
And then we realize that's not necessarily intelligible to a lot of people because we are not a carbon literate society. So we have created a climatarian and dietary filter where if you really want to eat with carbon emissions in mind, you can filter by climatarian and we'll show you the lowest impact, lowest emissions items on our menu. So I guess that's one additional thing I would want people to know about us.
Alex: After putting the carbon labels in the menu, and I don't know when, when did you start that program? How long ago was that?
Sandra: It was 2021.
Alex: Okay, so we have a little bit of data. have you noticed a shift? Has it been long enough to be able to see that, that your consumers are making more climate friendly decisions after implementing something like that? Have you seen anything from the data yet? I know it hasn't been too, too long, but I'm curious if you've kind of seen anything so far.
Sandra: I'm sorry. It was. It was 2020 fall. 2020, not 2021. So we've seen spikes in consumption of our Clary menu items. When we put some communications muscle behind it.
we will on occasion promote our Clary menu items through a promotion or a discount, and then awareness spikes and, and you see more interest in those items. But I'm not gonna lie to you. It's not, like we have, you know, transform people's eating habits where they're now choosing, choosing, you know, no dairy, no meat items, which a lot of the planetary items are, because we're, that's just not, that's just not what dietary habits are, by and large.
Yeah. So what I would say to you, Alex, is it's our job to continue to create rewards and incentives and stories that make people take more interest in this type of eating.
Alex: So it's just such an educational experience. I mean, I feel like we're on sort of a, an almost like a 20-year trend of consumers wanting to know more and more about what they consume.
So that, that's, that's just as true in fashion, in retail as it is in restaurants. I mean, I, I don't know, I, maybe 20 years ago, I don't know when it was that they started to put calorie counts in the menus and then it was locally sourced, and then it was like the farm. So now you go to a restaurant and it's like, this is the farm that we source it from. And then it was, you know, grass fed versus pasture raised.
I don't know, I just, I feel like the, the modern consumer is just really, they just want to know more. And to me that just seems like a great way to engage with people. And you're right. It doesn't mean that people always make the most climate friendly decision or the most sustainable decision, or most local decision or wherever it is, but I do think that people, it seems want to know more and I think it's a brand, it's a great opportunity for a brand to connect with people on a different level and help to teach them about some of the things they're consuming. And that's important for a lot of people.
Sandra: Yeah. And, and I like, it's a lot to expect someone to read a carbon label and get a lot out of just that number. And so we're working with Planet Forward, a company that carbon labels that, that, that does carbon labeling for brands to show the impact of one menu item switch.
So, for example, we went from conventionally grown quinoa to regenerative, regenerative, organic certified rock quinoa, and we are working with Planet forward to quantify the emissions impact of that one ingredient switch because of the regenerative practices of the quinoa producer that we switched to.
And I know, I know the emissions footprint has gone down and now we have based on their work, and so now we have to tell that story to our customers, and do it in a way that's compelling.
Alex: Well, and, and honestly, I, this is new for me to learn as well, but you know, I feel like typically kind of the, the, the climatarian advice is, you know, plant-based and local.
But to learn, you know, something even like quinoa, even as you mentioned earlier, that rice actually has a lot of differences too, I think a lot of people would be surprised at the way that these crops are raised, really matters from that perspective.
how much is the difference between a, a regenerative, rock quinoa versus a typical quinoa? What is relatively, is it twice as good or, or more what, how does, can you help explain like what's the difference there?
Sandra: Yeah, so our preliminary estimates, I should say Planet Forwards preliminary estimates and calculations are that switching, our switching to rock quinoa has resulted in about a 4% reduction in the carbon emissions associated with a menu item. That is quite significant given it's a single ingredient.
They're also looking at vegan feta. We have a vegan feta we love on our menu from Biolife. They're also working with us to quantify conventional dairy feta versus that vegan feta. And that too seems to be producing quite a reduction in the items footprint. So we do it on a percentage basis. And those stories are all on their way out. It just takes a lot of time.
Alex: Yeah. Well, and, and you, and like you said at the beginning, you know, you, you want to make sure that, anything that you put forward not only has a good story, but it's, it's, it's real, right? It's not just like, Hey, this sounds good.
It's not other biodegradable, you know, that, 20 years from now, like the, the whole quinoa thing, that was a marketing employee. These are real stuff. Like you're really doing a lot of work here to know what this stuff is and helping to educate customers. But, you know, this is, this is a lot of steps for a customer to be able to get to.
And their typical thought is, you know, I'm just, I'm, it's, it's noon and I, I need to eat a meal in 20 minutes. To be able to go that step further and be truly an educator there is gonna take time.
Sandra: That's the thing. As a sustainability professional, like you want, you are trying to achieve true resource efficiencies and reductions in emissions, but then you have to translate that to something that is going to emotionally resonate with the customer. And those two things are separate exercises a lot of the time.
Alex: Well, and I think if I've learned anything in the last few years, it's that the, the general public, it's, it's hard to educate people on complicated scientific issues. Because scientific issues are confusing and they're not always like perfectly black and white. It's, it's hard. It's hard to get this stuff, and you can't just read it in a tweet and really know the details. You gotta really get into it to make sure that what you're saying is, is, is correct and people can understand it.
You know, I know you mentioned carbon literacy a little bit, but one of the things that I know we've had a number of conversations offline about is kind of this idea that, you know, not every, not every brand has a Sandra today. And in the future, my suspicion is a lot of these companies are gonna have to figure out how to survive, beyond the sustainability transition.
They're gonna have to, to know, they're gonna have to build this stuff into what they do to be able to thrive in the next 50 years cuz, you know, consumers are headed this direction and people want to meet people where they are. So, I know you've done a lot of work, not just in terms of educating customers.
You've started to create some classes to help other professionals who have varying levels of interest in sustainability. So I think it's a, is it an action class program? Can you talk to us a little about what you're doing, within the greater community of professionals who, who really want to level up their, their sustainability knowledge in their own businesses?
Sandra: Yeah. So I was speaking to a group of customers a few months ago and I was explaining the, the benefits of reuse in very granular emissions, water waste terms. And this customer, you could tell like he was, his brain was lighting up and he says to me, well, why aren't you like, what else are you doing beyond your company, and I went, well, that's a great question.
Alex: You're not busy enough, Sandra, isn't there, don't you have more time in the day to tell him?
Sandra: Like, what are you doing beyond Just Salad? You know? And I said, well, I, I couldn't get that question outta my mind. And it does come up. Like it's great that Just Salad is its own like circularity laboratory. We really are, and we're constantly testing and learning on Reusables. We have been for 16 years. At some point, if reuse is going to scale as something that's culturally the default and a social norm and convenient and easy, there's so many things we're gonna need.
We're gonna need infrastructure for it. We're gonna need brands collaborating. Like you can't have people walking around with six different reusable containers for all their different brands. So it is time for us to teach what we know. And so, yeah, we put together a class and had our first class on reusable packaging and how to scale it this month.
And we teach everything like lifecycle analysis. Making sure your reusable packaging program is not having worse environmental impacts than disposables, which it totally could if you don't manage it, right? Thinking about your system, thinking about customer awareness, opt-in rates, return rates, sanitation, standard operating procedure, like there's so many pieces to getting reusability. and then measuring its true environmental impact. It's not enough to put out reusable packaging. You have to make sure that people are reusing the reusable packaging.
Alex: Yes. Well, that's the, that's that there's, you know, there's an article every month about the reusable packages, a reusable grocery bags, you know, how many people buy the bags versus bring the bags back. And I know a lot of people do. I certainly. I work in sustainability, so it's like part of everything that I do.
But you know, it is, it's a big thing. Like it's easy to buy this stuff cuz I feel like we're just predisposition. Just keep buying more stuff. Like it's just buy more, buy more. And I think it's really important and something that I know that y'all care deeply about at Just Salad is you're not, this isn't something, we don't want you to buy a new Just Salad bowl every year.
You know, we want this one to be yours. And it's not a, this is not something that we're putting forward to add a new line item to the menu to make more money. This is literally to help us help you, create a world where this, this stuff doesn't have to be a necessity. And that's, that's very different than the way a lot of businesses have perceived this.
Sandra: I, I will be blunt, like if you, if you don't wanna commit to reusing A reusable Bowl at least 10 times, I'd ask you not to use it, not to buy it. Don't participate.
Alex: Is that the number, is it 10 times use?
Sandra: No, it's, it's lower, but I always buffer it. So our lifecycle analysis is, the breakeven point is about two uses, which is great.
Alex: Two uses. That's great. That's amazing. That's totally doable.
Sandra: Yeah, totally is. That's versus fiber disposable containers. But, I, I think, you know, obviously we want people using the container much, much more than that.
Alex: That gets me thinking a little bit about one of the questions that, that, that I wanted to ask, which is, what can the average customer do to help Just Salad? Like, like y'all obviously have these like very grand visions of, of a circular world, of zero waste dining, and I'm sure we are at the very tip of the iceberg of what you want to be able to accomplish in the next 10 or 20 years.
What can a consumer of, of Just Salad do to help you? Like what are the things that we can do to, to help y'all continue this mission forward and even accomplish some of these goals faster?
Sandra: Well, thanks for asking. I usually don't think about how our customers can help us. I think about how we can help our customers.
But if you're asking, I think that it's two things. One, if you really want to be an eco, let's use the term for its fault, an eco-conscious consumer, which is like an oxymoron in many ways, but you wanna be eco-conscious and you're living in a modern world and you're getting lunch on the go, the way to help us would be to opt into our reusable container program, and accept and embrace what that means, which is owning this container, washing it before you come back and getting a free topping as a reward every time you come back. So we're rewarding you and you're doing, you're changing your behavior slightly for that reward.
And then if you don't want to, I would say email sustainability@justsalad.com, and tell us why you didn't so that we can make it better. The other thing I'd say is we're piloting Reusables in our mobile. digitally try it out. And again, we, you know, I was talking to a family member, I said, yeah, you know, I was reading customer feedback and it was really interesting to me and my family member interrupted me and goes, you read customer feedback, aren't you too busy for that? I said, no, we, we read like every piece of customer feedback we get. And she's like, well, big companies don't do that. Well, no, ours does. So feedback, it does not get ignored, and so I'd say give us feedback.
Alex: As somebody who write, I, I actually do write letters to restaurants a lot. particularly something that I really like or don't or whatever, just cuz and I, I always get a response. I had a friend who, who did that growing up and he told me early on that if you do write most brands, that they write you back. And I think people are surprised to hear that sometimes.
Sandra: And even if they don't, it's very likely the company's having some like animated discussion about the letter and maybe just doesn't get around to responding, but yeah, doesn't just ignore it.
Alex: What, what is, what is putting the, the reusables in the mobile app entail? What is that I order it on my phone and, and, and when I get, like, what happens? Yeah. Like I bring it to this, how does it work?
Sandra: We go over this in this action class, but in at two pilot locations, you can opt into reusables when you're ordering digital pickup.
So I wanna order in the app, pick up at the store and you can opt in to get it in a reusable container, your order. So it'll be on the pickup shelf in a reusable container, and then you can bring it back to that store, drop it in a bin, we wash and sanitize. So it's slightly different than our traditional 16-year-old program. And we're starting that at two stores.
Alex: It's almost like a rental. Like I, like, I have a, I have a bowl. It's not technically always my bowl, but I kind of have a bowl so I can, I guess maybe how, bottles used to be I could drop 'em off and pick 'em up. It's like, you know, I can, I can deposit there. You clean it and then I get another one. Is that, is that correct?
Sandra: Yeah. It's like a library model, essentially. A lending model.
Alex: Oh, that's great. Yeah, that seems even better cuz then I don't have to do the dishes.
Sandra: Exactly.
Alex: That's, that's a, that's a plus on my side. That sounds great. What is the most earth friendly order at Just Salad? Like what is the most, on your Climatarian menu, what is the, what is the, what's the pinnacle? Yes. and how does that, and how does that compare to the worst item? So what's like the difference basically?
Sandra: Oh wow. You're really putting me to the test here. So if I'm in the Just Salad app, I filter by climatarian. This varies cuz our menu seasonally it gets changed up, at least seasonally. And so right now, today, as I scroll through our climatarian menu, the most Earth-Friendly, if you look at it from the lens of carbon emissions, which is just one environmental indicator, it seems to be a tie between Tokyo SuperGreens with tofu, which is 0.68 kilograms of CO2E per serving, so is the feisty festival. And so those two have the lowest, estimated carbon footprint of anything on our menu.
Alex: Can I say those are more exciting options than I thought there would be. I, I would've, I thought you were just gonna say like, like bowl of Romaine and that was it. But those are like actually really good.
Sandra: So that's not really a lunch. You're not gonna get filled up with a bowl of Romaine.
Alex: That's true. That's true. well, Sandra, is there anything that I missed, anything that, that, that, that people would be surprised to hear, that, that I didn't ask today? that would be, interesting to talk about?
Sandra: No, I think you covered it. I mean, I, I would say if you're a company or an operator and you want to learn about our reuse program, the website for that course is thenewgreennormal.com. That name is very intentional. We are trying to pioneer a new green normal. so that's, where you can go to learn more about it.
And then justsalad.com/carbonlabel explains our carbon labeling initiative. And again, sustainability@justsalad.com is where to contact us.
Alex: And on the new green normal, the, this is the action class to learn how to do this stuff. Is it limited to restaurants? Can this be applied to retailers and other folks that are trying to build, you know, a reusable program into what they do?
Sandra: I think so. We, we certainly don't turn anyone away, and I do think they're definite, applications to other business models.
Alex: Awesome. Well, we will make sure to, when we put this out, we'll make sure to, to put that on the website so that people can be directed to it. And, anyway, Sandra, this has been delightful.
Thank you so much, for, for coming on to, to join today. I know you shared a ton of information and I certainly learned a lot. So thank you for, for joining.
Sandra: Thanks, really appreciate it.