The National Restaurant Association rollout during NRA Show 2009 of their new campaign dubbed Conserve/EPA ENERGY STAR Challenge is calling on the nation's nearly one million restaurants, all 13 million employees, suppliers and people from all walks of life to reduce energy and water use.
Culinary student volunteers from Kendall College, an official Conserve educational partner, wore brightly colored t-shirts advertising the challenge as they trekked the show floor and grabbed the attention of attendees at every turn. An impressive number of nearly 500 NRA Show attendees raced to sign up on the spot to take the Conserve/EPA ENERGY STAR Challenge.
"The students' activities - along with the Green or No Green game show and free tee-shirts for everyone that signed up for the Challenge - made this one of the most creative and engaging rollouts of an ENERGY STAR Challenge I have seen at my time with EPA. I am very pleased, as a representative of ENERGY STAR, to see the NRA demonstrate environmental leadership by promoting the importance of energy efficiency in commercial buildings to their members," said Anna Stark, program manager, ENERGY STAR Commercial Markets.
Participants were challenged to cut back their water consumption, electricity and gas simply by turning off unneeded light, powering down unused equipment, or asking guests if they want water instead of automatically bringing it to the table. Easy enough, right?
Go ahead, sign up and join people all across the country as they take the National Restaurant Association Conserve/EPA ENERGY STAR Challenge today. Use the program's checklist of easy water- and energy-conserving steps to start cutting down on utility costs.
Also, view the more than 65 free education sessions that were offered to attendees at this year's NRA Show, including the "sustainable and social responsibility" track. The session recordings are also available for purchase.
Pictured: Kendall College student volunteers and media mogul, Ted's Montana Grill co-founder and environmentalist Ted Turner
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