The Ocean Friendly Restaurants Program is excited to announce a brand new collaboration with EcoRate!
EcoRate is a sustainability ratings platform that helps people easily locate cafes, restaurants, refill stores, and other venues that participate in waste-prevention initiatives. EcoRate scores retailers based on environmental criteria and allows the user to tap the "BYO", "Mug", or "Glass" filters to only see the places that let you bring a thermos, have mugs for dine-in hot drinks, or glasses for dine-in cold drinks.
Now, when you go to ecorate.eco you will see all of Surfrider's Ocean Friendly Restaurants listed on EcoRate's map! You can even press the OFR filter to only see OFRs. New OFRs will be added at the first of every month, so if you are an OFR that just signed up and don't see your restaurant, don't worry! It will be added soon.
The venues with the highest ecorating appear with larger and greener icons. The venues with lower ecoratings are smaller and grayer, and blue means they're unrated. Users can create an account to submit their own ratings either through the webpage or the EcoRate app available on the App Store.
Surfrider's OFR Program and EcoRate have similar goals: to recognize businesses for reducing waste and providing customers with the tools to make sustainable dining choices. Together, we are creating a community of businesses, patrons, and activists that we can promote, support, and lift up as examples of success to influence behavior change and policy action. The larger we grow our network of ocean-friendly leaders, the more mainstream the concept of plastic-free becomes.
Is your local restaurant Ocean Friendly? If not, encourage them to sign up and join the movement to end single-use plastics!