Over the last several decades San Francisco has been a prominent leader of establishing environmentally friendly lifestyles for urban populations. Our beautiful city has made composting and recycling a standard. We banned plastic bags from our grocery stores and plastic bottles from being sold on city property. We stock our shelves with organic and sustainable products, and we love to support local businesses. San Francisco’s residents are proud to be green, a value that makes us a role model for other cities striving for eco-evolution.
It only makes sense that more of our restaurants, cafes and eateries are joining the eco-friendly bandwagon. In a city of people who love the environment, many businesses won’t last unless they show how committed they are to providing environmentally friendly products. Our consumer standards for ethically and environmentally conscious consumption reach everything from produce, grains, rice, meats, and now, increasingly, seafood. San Francisco has the opportunity – perhaps the obligation – to serve as a role model for a city that fights to protect our oceans.
Eco-conscious dining
The average San Francisco resident definitely cares about eating healthy food, but they also care deeply about where that food originates. Eco-conscious consumers make forceful demands through their buying power that our food not be processed in massive factories or grown with immense amounts of pesticides. And businesses are certainly listening – it is more common than not to see food labels of both produce and meats boasting the words organic, local, grass-fed, sustainable.
Seafood was one item that slipped under our radar for a long time, mostly due to lack of information. We were much more interested in the food supply that people breed, grow, produce, and have general control over on farms and ranches. Recently seafood has been gaining a lot of attention – in just the last few years, consumer access to seafood traceability has increased tremendously through information on the web and Smartphone apps such as Seafood Watch. Consumers have realized that we are harming our oceans – and that we have the power to control it just as much as we do for other food industries.
San Francisco residents have enthusiastically begun demanding sustainable seafood options. If there is a way for us to help the environment, we are by all means going to take advantage of it. Local businesses have risen to meet this demand for sustainable and traceable seafood from informed consumers. Many restaurants in various neighborhoods now proudly feature locally farmed oysters, locally caught lingcod and rockfish, wild-caught salmon, fresh Dungeness from West Coast fishermen, and many other fish and shellfish with a label in sustainability. A seafood-restaurant oriented walk around Fisherman’s Wharf, a San Francisco tourist hotspot, reveals numerous assertions of seafood sustainability to attract the eco-conscious diner.
Residents and tourists alike are drawn in by these declarations of sustainably sourced seafood. People who live in San Francisco and surrounding cities love to know that our local businesses do not only care about their customers, but they also care about the environment. Tourists who visit are often attracted by our eco-friendly values and people travel from all over the world to marvel at our extensive range of state and federal parks, and fantastic environmental institutions such as the California Academy of Sciences. San Francisco is a gorgeous city and visitors enjoy knowing that we take care of it. In this way, our city has the opportunity to provide an excellent example for sustainable urban living.
If you are questioning the value of sustainable seafood to diners of San Francisco’s restaurants, all you have to do is search for “sustainable seafood” on Yelp and sift through the pages of raving reviews for the establishments that serve it. There is an undeniable enthusiasm that comes from diners who encounter such eco-friendly options in our city.
A role model for sustainable seafood
Residents of the San Francisco Bay Area live in a progressive culture, one in which we demand accountability from the businesses we support. Our diners love to sit down for a meal and know that their buying choices are helping protect the ocean. It is a message that all San Francisco restaurants should share. Our residents and businesses alike celebrate our connection with the environment; it only seems to make sense that a city living on the brink of the Pacific Ocean should strive to do everything possible to help protect that ocean – first and foremost by serving sustainable seafood. San Francisco is already a shining example for ethically conscious living and eco-friendly lifestyles, and it has a great potential to become a role model for sustainable and renewable seafood. Join the revolution by purchasing your wholesale seafood only from a trusted distributor that carries a certification from the Marine Stewardship Council, like Pucci Foods.