Clean Your Plate

Image by wonderyort via Flickr

Remember when you were a kid and your mother told you to clean your plate because there were starving kids in Africa who would love to have it?  If you were like me, you were willing to send it to them.  Well now there is a restaurant in Australia that takes the "clean your plate" mantra to another level.

Yukako Ichikawa is chef and owner of the Wafu restaurant located in the suburbs of Sydney.  They state as their goal, "to contribute towards creating a sustainable future we request a little more of our guests than most other restaurants."  They ask their patrons to not waste food or containers.

They actually state in their "Eat In" policy that if you agree to their terms to "not waste food" then you are welcome to eat at their restaurant.  To not waste food is to eat everything on your plate, with the exception of lemon slices, wasabi, and sushi ginger.  If you don't finish your meal, they will suggest you find another place to dine.

If you want to get carry out, they have rules for that too.  You have to bring your own containers, otherwise they will charge you $3 to use their containers.  Oh, and don't bring an aluminum container.  They aren't reusable, so you obviously don't care about waste prevention.  They also don't want you to bring in a new container that you just bought.

Now I am not a proponent of wasting food and throwing it out.  There have been times when I have been trying to lose weight, and my wife has brought home a box of donuts.  Rather than let them get stale and end up getting thrown out, I would eat them.  However, this is one business that I can't see ever getting getting any of my hard earned dollars.

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