Operations

Sweetgreen makes carbon-neutral pledge

Provided

February 24, 2021

Sweetgreen has pledged to be carbon neutral by 2027, and co-founder Nicolas Jammet said the company will meet that goal by focusing on sustainable sourcing, developing more plant-based products and changing how it builds restaurants.

"Simply put, we believe it's the right thing to do for our business and for the planet. With the food system driving 25 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, the time for change is now," he said in a company press release. "We know that real change doesn't happen overnight — it's all the steps in between, the little moments that can lead to a big impact. That's why we're making this commitment."

The chain partnered with Watershed, a company that measures carbon footprints, to survey Sweetgreen's emission output and develop an action plan to reach carbon neutrality.

The path forward

Sweetgreen is cutting its carbon intensity in half through sustainable sourcing decisions and menu development, optimizing how it builds restaurants and investing in clean energy. After reducing as much as possible, leaders will then put resources toward instating meaningful offsets, all toward the goal of carbon neutrality, Jammet said. The first steps include:

• Sustainable sourcing: Sweetgreen commissioned carbon assessments of specific suppliers on their practices, including how much feed they use and how they handle manure. This helped the chain calculate an accurate carbon footprint for each of its menu items, and it will use the data to guide future sourcing decisions.
• Menu development: Sweetgreen will use emissions as a tool for menu evaluation and a catalyst for introducing more plant-powered salads and soil-friendly ingredients like regenerative kelp and the cover crop sorghum to the menu roster. Additionally, it will continue to work closely with poultry and cheese suppliers to implement new strategies for carbon minimization.
• Building restaurants: The team is conducting an extensive assessment of the entire resource and development pipeline, but priority initiatives are optimizing building materials from construction to furniture, investing in clean energy, and double-clicking into more detailed decisions around things like equipment and refrigeration.

"Sweetgreen is working across every element of the food system — how food is grown on farms, transported to customers, and consumed in restaurants — to cut emissions," Taylor Francis, co-founder of Watershed, said in the release. "Sweetgreen's menu is already 30 percent less carbon intensive than the average U.S. diet, and their commitment to decrease their greenhouse gas intensity by 50 percent and become carbon neutral is setting a new bar for the industry."

Founded in 2007, sweetgreen has more than 100 units and was the No. 1 brand on FastCasual's 2020 Top 100 Movers & Shakers.