Portillo's is committed to serving our Team Members, our guests and our shareholders.
This means being thoughtful about the actions we take regarding the environment. We are reflecting on opportunities to continue to strengthen the many initiatives already in place as well as develop new ones.
Our environmental impact is important at all levels of Portillo's. We have a Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee that assists Portillo's Board in the oversight of our practices, policies, procedures, strategies and initiatives that relate to sustainability.
At Portillo’s, we continue to look at ways to both reduce the amount of packaging used and move to more environmentally friendly materials in our restaurants. Our results are driving the initiatives shown here.
Q3 2021
Switched from foam sandwich boxes to a paper sandwich box made from recycled materials.
Q1 2022
Switched from bleached white paper bags to brown paper bags.
Our new paper bag is 100% recyclable, does not need to be bleached, and is made from fibers certified by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative.
Q4 2022
Changed our side cups and soup cups from foam to paper.
Q1 2023
Updated gravy packaging used from plastic tubs to pouches, which will eliminate waste from gravy packaging by nearly 100x.
Q2 2023
Changed our rib boxes from bleached boxes to natural boxes, which are recyclable.
Q3 2023
Transitioned soft drink cups from foam to paper.
Q4 2023 and beyond
We are continuously working to find new ways to add more sustainable materials into our packaging and will announce more once completed.
Our sustainability strategy already includes changes to our packaging, restaurant design and ingredients, and we will continue to progress our efforts.
We recycle our cooking oil which is processed into renewable diesel.
We've retrofitted most of our original restaurants with more energy-efficient lighting, reducing lighting energy use by 55%. We build all new restaurants with this energy efficient lighting.
We've added the Plant Based Garden Dog to our menu. This vegan version of our famed Chicago-style hot dog is Non-GMO Project verified.