The far reaching effects of the drought emergency in California are here, and affecting all us. It was difficult to think of that this last week with the rain pouring down, but it's true none the less. We’re concerned for the the farmers we buy from at the farmer's market, and we’re concerned for the folks providing the pasture-raised beef at Watkins Cattle & Livestock. And, of course, water is an important thing when you operate a restaurant.
Sly's is now following the Carpinteria Valley Water District’s guidelines on providing glasses of water only upon request. In spite of all that, it takes a lot of water to run a restaurant. At Sly’s we’re working proactively to help reduce that amount.
Last month, we requested a Water Usage Audit from the Carpinteria Valley Water District, and went step by step through our restaurant with the District’s water conservation expert. Happily, he gave Sly’s a good report card on our water usage - no leaking toilets or dripping faucets or other obvious waste.
Here’s some of what Sly’s does to save water:
- Last year, we installed a waterless urinal in the men’s room. We’re told that this saves between 20,000 and 45,000 gallons of water a year. We think everybody should be installing them-that’s a big savings in our mind.
- We’ve installed a recirculating system on the hot water for the bathrooms - it means you don’t have to run gallons and gallons of water down the drain just to get to the hot water for hand washing.
- We don’t have a lot of planting - just our few rosemary bushes, our drought resistant matillaja poppies, and the old-fashioned Don Juan climbing roses. We use a timed sprinkler system to minimize water use on these plants.
- We wash our floor mats in a special mat washing area that drains to a grease interceptor, keeping grease out of the city’s sanitation system, and helping to make the sewage treatment plant work as intended. When we do wash those mats, we use a special low-flow pressure washer that minimizes the amount of water needed to get clean, sanitary floor mats each day.
- Sadly, we haven’t hosed down the driveways or washed the sidewalks in a long, long time as the City of Carpinteria has always frowned on using water to clean them, even when we were following their own guidelines. We’ll continue with that policy.
- The dishwasher where we wash our dishes and glasses is pretty darn efficient. To wash 25 glasses, it takes just 1.5 gallons of water - and that’s for the rinse water. After rinsing a rack of glasses, the rinse water is saved to become the wash water for the next batch. So the total per rack is 1.5 gallons - which is less than 8 ounces, a mere measuring cup, per glass. Of course, it takes about 16 ounces to fill the glass of water that you’re drinking.
Truth be told, though, ware washing is the least amount of water we use at Sly’s. Unfortunately, to run a clean, healthy and safe operation, it takes cleaning, and more often than not that takes water. We want our staff to wash their hands - and often, I think you want them to as well! And we have to scrub all the pots and pans we cook in, all the cutting boards, all the knives, cooking spoons, spatulas, mixing bowls and tongs.
Then there’s the cooking. At Sly’s we make pretty much everything here, including things that at some restaurants just have arrive in boxes. Baking our fresh breads and rolls takes water - both to make the dough and clean the mixing bowl. We need water to wash the vegetables and to soak the French fried potatoes when we cut them fresh. Cooking our fresh vegetables from the farmer’s market, making the wonderful soups and stocks we have, and cooking our pastas and noodles fresh all take water. And we keep washing those hands, too.
We think that we’re lucky in our modern world to have fresh, clean water - so lucky that we tend to take it for granted. With any luck, we’ll have some rain coming our way, and the drought conditions may end. In the meantime, we’ll be trying our best to save water at Sly’s.
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