Restaurants consume more energy per square foot than any other industry, and they are heavy generators of solid waste, big users of water, and notable polluters of waterways and oceans due to improper dumping of oil and grease. Some people might absorb this information and simply see a depressing environmental problem, but Ritu Primlani, this week's Grist diarist, instead sees an exciting conservation opportunity. As executive director of Thimmakka's Resources for Environmental Education, which runs a Greening Ethnic Restaurants program, Primlani does environmental outreach to owners of ethnic eateries in the San Francisco Bay area. More than 40 restaurants have joined the program so far and together each year they save more than a million gallons of water, reduce energy consumption by 75,000 kilowatt-hours, and prevent the emission of 50,000 pounds of carbon dioxide. Follow Primlani as she travels from Vic's Chaat Cafe to Sikh peach farms, only on the Grist Magazine website.