As many of you know I’m an earth loving eco-chic vegetarian who stills gets her french fries cravings and it usually happens right before a certain time of the month, hint hint. I was having one of those mornings, driving around doing some local shopping and saw Burgerville. And yeah, I pulled right into the drive-through when I saw the above sign and felt really good about buying my french fries from a local business that cares about the environment.

Yes, it’s actually true. My friend Jen didn’t believe me at first but this comfort food king, exclusive to the Pacific North West is the only fast food joint that I know of that uses local, organic and sustainable foods. Their salads rock and their shakes are to die for, made from whatever is local at the time. Right now it’s raspberries. Just as important are the company’s composting and recycling programs that keep the icky-ness out of the landfills. For example their plastic containers are biodegradable.

Burgerville also uses wind power for all their 39 restaurants and corporate offices. As stated in the above sign (another photo I took while waiting for my fries), “by using wind power, Burgerville avoids adding 17.4 million pounds of CO2 to the region annually. This is the equivalent of planting 160,000 trees.” And one last thing. While I was perusing the aisles at Portland’s Sustainable Living Show last May, I stopped in at Burgerville’s booth and one of the women told me that Burgerville had agreed to redesign the uniforms for female employees to be more female friendly. We like that.