Australian Sushi Restaurant Fines Customers for Failing to Clean Their Plates
If you're eating at an Australian restaurant called Wafu outside of Sydney, you better finish your plate -- or pay a fine and not return. Chef Yukako Ichikawa is tired of the food waste people leave on their plates and the environmental impact, however unintentional, it all leaves behind.
Wafu, a restaurant for "guilty free Japanese cuisine," now gives a 30-percent discount to customers who eat all the food they order. Wafu makes its ethos pretty clear every step of the way, starting with its website. First request: "Please be mindful of the amount of food you order -- consider ordering just the right amount, in harmony with your appetite!"
Reuters reports that the restaurant has posted its policies outside the door -- including the use of organic food free of gluten, dairy, sugar and eggs, and is completed with a warning: "To contribute toward creating a sustainable future we request a little more of our guests than most other restaurants."
Once inside, you'll find a menu that says, "Finishing your meal requires that everything is eaten except lemon slices, gari (sushi ginger) and wasabi," followed by -- "Please also note that vegetables and salad on the side are NOT decorations; they are part of the meal too."
It may sound like a stretch to some, but considering that an estimated $48.2 billion of food goes to waste in the U.S. alone (which translates to between 30 and 40 percent of our food); that food makes up the third-largest waste stream in the U.S.; and that 300 million barrels of oil are wasted along with all that food, the world could do with a lot more restaurants (and homes) that prohibit food waste the way Wafu does.
