Courtesy of the MUSE School CA

The Green Restaurant Association announced in April 2016 that the MUSE School Kitchen is now the Greenest Restaurant in the World. MUSE, a private school located in Calabasas, CA, has implemented 49 environmental steps and earned over 550 GreenPoints™ to become a 4 Star Certified Green Restaurant®. MUSE has the most GreenPoints™ of any restaurant in the world. 

MUSE has implemented two unusual and extraordinary steps that bring a restaurant’s environmental impact dramatically down. First, MUSE’s electricity is 100 percent solar. That means the lights, AC, electric cooking equipment, refrigerators, and freezers are all powered by the sun. The restaurant industry is the largest consumer of electricity in the retail sector.
 
The second extraordinary change MUSE implemented was changing its menu to be low on the food chain, plant-based. That means no cheese, eggs, chicken, beef, or fish. However, MUSE didn’t start as a plant-based kitchen. Based on reducing the school’s environmental impact, MUSE made the decision a few years ago to slowly shift to a plant-based menu. Over an 18-month period, MUSE gradually replaced animal-based menu items with plant-based items while educating its community about the environmental benefits of a plant-based diet.

“MUSE School’s Kitchen has just pushed the edge of sustainability even further from vision to reality,” said Michael Oshman, CEO and Founder of the Green Restaurant Association. “I applaud MUSE’s leadership in providing a successful foodservice operation that is in concert with the oft-used word `Sustainability.’”

“This has been a dream come true,” said MUSE School Founders Suzy Amis Cameron (wife of director James Cameron) and Rebecca Amis. “This honor by the Green Restaurant Association celebrates our choice to eat and cook green at MUSE. It’s our hope to share MUSE School’s best practices with the greater restaurant community, magnifying the positive effect plant-based eating and green kitchen practices have on the environment.”

Highlights of Green Accomplishments:

100 percent Solar
On-site Food Production
100% Plant-Based
Full-Scale Recycling Program
Composting
High Efficiency Refrigerator
Ceiling Fan
LED Lighting
0.5 gallon-per-minute Faucet Aerators
Recycled and Reusable Products
Less Toxic Cleaning Products 

About MUSE School CA
Founded in 2006 by Suzy Amis Cameron and Rebecca Amis, MUSE School CA’s mission is to inspire and prepare young people to live consciously with themselves, one another, and the planet. As one of the greenest schools in the United States, MUSE supports spontaneous learning on both its campuses, enticing students from Early Childhood through High School to explore, create, discover and reflect. For more information visit www.museschool.org.

About the Green Restaurant Association
The Green Restaurant Association is a national non-profit organization that provides the only official Certified Green Restaurants® mark in the country. For 25 years, the GRA has pioneered the Green Restaurant® movement and has been the leading voice within the industry encouraging restaurants to listen to consumer demand and green their operations using transparent, science-based certification standards. For more information, visit www.dinegreen.com