Ballyneal strives to be an eco-friendly leader among regional restaurants

    Starbucks announced earlier this month that it will eliminate single-use plastic straws from its stores by 2020. Just last week, Marriott followed suit, pledging to do away with such straws and stirrers by next July. There are bans in entire cities and even some countries. Right now, going straw-free is a hugely popular movement, with more and more people giving up plastic straws all the time.
    Locally, there’s one restaurant in particular with its eye on the movement, striving to make environmentally friendly choices, and it hopes to lead by example for others in the industry. While Ballyneal’s Turtle Bar and Restaurant doesn’t have a trendy straw ban or pledge to remove single-use plastic items, the golf club has made various efforts to cut down on waste in recent years.
    Chef Ace Linne-Speidel spoke about some of the challenges of running a kitchen in an area that can often feel removed from such concerns. When national headlines are made by such things as China announcing its ban on importing other countries’ recyclables or oceans being harmed by plastic, it’s easy to think that rural Colorado is far enough removed that the issues don’t matter.
    However, Linne-Speidel doesn’t think so. With the support of the management at Ballyneal, he takes the responsibility of caring for the environment quite seriously, but it’s a constant struggle to balance choices that are eco-friendly and cost-effective.
    One of the first big eco-friendly moves they made in the kitchen was phasing out styrofoam to-go boxes. Though it’s possible to recycle styrofoam, many facilities that accept other forms of plastic cannot process it. That’s why Ballyneal switched to to-go boxes that are both made from recycled material and biodegradable.
    The kitchen also made the switch to sustainably sourced seafood, considering the well-being of the oceans and the environment as a whole. Linne-Speidel said that as they make these changes, food reps begin to understand the restaurant’s ideals and priorities and, in turn, can source products that suit them.
    Something that Ballyneal looked at repeatedly was recycling, but it always proved cost-prohibitive. It wasn’t until Phillips County received a grant from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment that recycling was made possible at Ballyneal. One of the three roll-off boxes the County now uses to collect plastic recycling is stationed at the golf club, along with a trailer for corrugated cardboard recycling. It was a big step in the right direction, but Linne-Speidel doesn’t think it would have been possible without that grant money.
    In rural areas especially, it can be very expensive for a business to recycle. Holyoke is fortunate to be in a county that has some recycling options available.
    Even with the on-site plastic and cardboard receptacles, there are still challenges at Ballyneal. It does take more work to separate the recyclables from the trash, but Linne-Speidel makes it a priority for his kitchen to lead by example.
    Not every environmentally friendly change has been successful, though. For a time, Ballyneal gave biodegradable trash bags a try. They cost about twice as much as the plastic bags they’d been using, but the real setback was that they tore more easily.
    When someone is used to being able to throw durable trash bags into a dumpster, the extra effort to carry a trash can to the dumpster and dump it in can be a deal-breaker. And it was. They’re back to the old plastic bags because they’re cheaper and easier. That isn’t to say they might not be given another chance in the future, and what wasn’t a good fit for Ballyneal might work well for a different business.

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