Sustainability in the Spotlight: Green Business Ingenuity

New Orleans is home to a vibrant community of entrepreneurs who drive innovation and create jobs. As an initiative of the Urban Conservancy, at StayLocal we’ve witnessed the power of local ideas fostering economic growth time and again. From green infrastructure companies to biodegradable products, our local businesses not only meet market demands but also champion sustainability.

 

We’ve launched Sustainability Spotlight, a campaign highlighting local businesses that prioritize both entrepreneurship and environmental conservation. StayLocal is shining a spotlight on those businesses engaged in:

  • collecting and repurposing materials

  • participating in composting programs and reducing food waste in other ways

  • reducing plastic waste, and

  • shrinking carbon footprints.

 
 

Businesses Listed on StayLocal’s Directory

Our map shows New Orleans businesses practicing sustainability at their locations. To see all businesses, remove the “Eco-friendly” filter or click here.

To learn more about businesses which provide environmental services like rain gardens to homes, add filter “Green Sector”, or head here.

TAKE ME TO THE MAP
 
 
 
 

Empowering Businesses for a Greener Tomorrow

Together with our partners at GREEN Hospitality, StayLocal is empowering businesses as part of our 2024 Small Business Sustainability Accelerator. The accelerator supports business owners working toward a greener future in both Hong Kong and New Orleans, and emphasizes the role that independent business owners play as initiators of change in communities.

A whopping 40 percent of all food goes unsold or uneaten in the United States. It ends up in a landfill, where it decomposes and releases methane — a greenhouse gas between 24 and 87 times more potent than CO2. This makes reducing food waste one of the top three ways to reverse climate change. Building better systems for addressing food waste in food and beverage businesses can be achieved with minimal guidance.

StayLocal partnered with GREEN Hospitality, an innovator in Hong Kong’s hospitality industry, to offer free multi-module workshops to owners of local restaurants and other food businesses in August, 2024. More than a dozen chefs and hospitality leaders gathered to share local knowledge and access global best practices during sessions that covered auditing existing waste mix, building team goals around diverting waste, and effectively messaging to customers about community benefit. The following restaurants are leaders in reducing food waste in New Orleans:

Petite Rouge Cafe | Southern Food and Beverage Museum | Acorn Cafe | Codey’s NOLA | Morial Convention Center | Tulane Hospitality | Docville Farm | Rebouche’s Cafe |  Agave Mexican Restaurant | Chalmette High School | Delgado Community College Culinary Arts | Nunez Community College Culinary Arts| Urban Fork Corporation

If you are a business interested in participating in future workshops or learning more about how you can reduce commercial food waste, provide your email for updates here, and we'll be sure to keep you in the loop!

 
 

Contribute Less Food Waste

Our map shows New Orleans businesses practicing sustainability at their locations, so consumers can be better informed when selecting green businesses to support.

For those residents and consumers interested in sorting food waste out of their home residential trash, tools can be found in this NPR Life Kit or at Compost Now’s website.