ST. LOUIS—Nearly 100 Certified Green Dining Alliance restaurants around St. Louis treat every day like Earth Day by reducing energy consumption and diverting two million pounds of landfill waste each year.
“It’s not necessarily for us, but for later generations to have a place where they can breathe normally and eat healthy foods,” said Mel Van Den Bergh, General Manager of Moonrise Hotel. “We want to leave that legacy of leaving a clean footprint behind.”
The Moonrise Hotel, in the Delmar loop, showed Spectrum News how they met the Green Dining Alliance’s certification standards.
“It’s just very important for the future. Look at it, we’re in U City, the city of trees, correct? Look it’s all green and we want to keep it that way.”
Moonrise Hotel helps push the green initiative by generating clean power through 107 solar panels, recycling what they can such as bathroom toiletry bottles and paper products. The also operate an EV charging station out front and use an eco-friendly laundry service.
“For us (the laundry service) is probably a little bit more than we would do it at home, but they’re the professionals and it reduces the water (consumption).”
Mel believes other businesses not in the Green Dining Alliance should work towards meeting that standard.
“It’s good for the Earth. It’s good for the environment that we’re going to leave behind for our children and I think it’s important. It’s a commitment to the community that we all need to take care of.”
