The local/DIY/artisanal/craft/micro-brew is the hippest of hip right now in the food world. The part of me that wants humans to inhabit the earth for a long time rejoiced when I saw this story from the National Restaurant Association indicating that sustainability is now "more standard operating procedure than a trend."

I have to wonder if this sentiment is authentic or just an empty pander to the demands of eco-conscious consumers. The vagueness of this report from the Foodservice Packaging Institute makes me suspicious that "sustainable" will just become another meaningless label – similar to "free range" simply denoting the size of an animal's still-tiny cage – where some token amount of the packaging was made from post-consumer materials or some such thing.

Hopefully these efforts in "sustainability" include some creative thinking along the lines of recently announced edible packaging. But in a country where we rinse our sidewalks with drinking water and pay extra money to have our tap water filtered and bottled, I don't think Big Landfill has anything to worry about.

via National Restaurant Association/photo courtesy d-olwen-dee on Flickr