Education as Environmental Action: Marjorie Banks’ Sustainability Teaching
For Portland chef Marjorie Banks, education represents a crucial component of restaurant sustainability. Through her “Foundations to Flight” teaching program at Crust & Crumb, she’s training the next generation of chefs to integrate ecological awareness with culinary excellence.
“Technical skill without ecological awareness is increasingly irrelevant in today’s culinary landscape,” Banks asserts. “We need chefs who understand not just how to create beautiful food, but how that food impacts our planet.”
Her teaching methodology goes beyond culinary techniques to include hands-on sustainability practices. Students participate in composting, garden maintenance, and waste audits alongside their culinary training. This holistic approach ensures that sustainability becomes ingrained in their professional practice rather than treated as an afterthought.
By requiring students to conduct waste audits, Banks teaches them to measure environmental impact rather than relying on vague sustainability claims. This data-driven approach has revealed unexpected insights at Crust & Crumb, including the discovery that paper towels were their largest remaining waste source after implementing comprehensive food waste reduction.
Banks views knowledge-sharing as inherently sustainable: “The most unsustainable aspect of many restaurants is treating knowledge as something to be hoarded rather than shared. By teaching others our methods, we multiply our impact beyond what a single restaurant could achieve.”
Many program graduates have launched their own sustainable ventures, spreading Banks’ ecological approach throughout the culinary landscape. This cascading effect exemplifies her belief that education creates exponential impact.
“Sustainability isn’t a destination—it’s an ongoing process of examination and improvement,” she emphasizes. By equipping the next generation of chefs with both technical skills and ecological awareness, Banks ensures that her sustainable practices will continue evolving beyond her own kitchen.