Newport Restaurant Group (NRG) has announced the growth of its partnership with Greenplaces, a leader in the sustainability space, to enhance its sustainability strategy and to measure its carbon footprint better.
“This partnership with Greenplaces is our most substantive effort to date to measure our carbon footprint and develop a strategy to maximize our ability to make even more significant changes,” said Mick Lamond, President & CEO, Newport Restaurant Group. “Through our longtime adoption of programs to minimize waste and maximize energy efficiency, this partnership represents an important step in our journey toward becoming environmental stewards, as well as helping to pave the way for other restaurant groups looking to improve their impact.”
Since the launch of the partnership in 2022, NRG has offset 100% of its total Scope 1 emissions from its 2022 and 2023 footprints—those derived from sources owned or controlled by the company, including natural gas, company-owned vehicles, and refrigerants—offsetting 6,500 mT of carbon dioxide equivalent, the equivalent of taking 1,413 gas-powered vehicles off the road for one year.
As NRG continues to identify effective ways to reduce its carbon footprint, its partnership with Greenplaces generates key primary data to calculate emissions, which is often challenging and time-consuming for businesses to obtain. Primary data helps both NRG and Greenplaces harness actionable insights into operations to help identify and implement strategies that bring about meaningful economic and environmental improvements. NRG is also able to leverage energy usage and consumption trends to help parse out which business locations utilize the highest energy; invaluable insights as the Company helps optimize the lower-hanging fruit for efficiency gains.
To date, NRG has taken action in myriad ways, including making investments in renewable energy, carbon offset projects, and wind energy – most recently with Roosevelt Wind Project, Burn Stoves Project, and the Mexican Food Banking Network Project – to offset its Scope 1 emissions from gas burned.
Locally, a partnership with Mahoney Environmental allows NRG to recycle used fryer oil, used cooking oil, and grease trap material into raw material that can be used to manufacture new products such as renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel. All NRG restaurant properties proudly source from a variety of local farmers and growers, which reduces transportation emissions and decreases food waste.
In 2018, select properties added composting and in 2024 alone, 3,885 forty eight gallon bins were collected from NRG properties, yielding 388.5 tons of food waste diverted from the landfill. The company has also installed smart thermostats that automatically adjust when spaces are unoccupied, uses only environmentally friendly refrigerants, and continuously upgrades its HVAC systems to high-efficiency models. In 2024, advanced energy management systems were implemented across its properties, ensuring even greater efficiency and sustainability for the future.
“Newport Restaurant Group is taking meaningful steps to better understand and reduce its carbon footprint. By leveraging data-driven insights and making targeted sustainability improvements, NRG is setting an example for how hospitality businesses can take practical, measurable action toward a more sustainable future,” said Lily Rowland, Customer Success Manager, Greenplaces.
