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How many Triad area restaurants and food-service providers can boast of their efforts to improve their ecological footprint, either by composting food waste, reducing fossil-fuel use or purchasing local, organic and Fair Trade ingredients?

That number is still low, but during the past few years, some local businesses have taken steps to adopt socially and environmentally responsible business practices.

Southern Foods, a Greensboro-based food distributor, is one such company.

It offers all-natural, organic and locally produced food products to restaurants, grocery stores and other places, and it has been a member of Goodness Grows in North Carolina since 2003.

This year, the company took steps to lower its carbon footprint.

It hired a company to conduct an energy audit and provide offsets for its electricity and natural gas use. Those offsets support a 60,000-acre forest in Georgia, which helps sequester carbon dioxide, prevent erosion and accommodate wildlife.

Southern Foods also fuels its truck fleet with a 20 percent biodiesel blend, switched its indoor lights to compact fluorescent bulbs and supplies all-natural cleaners and biodegradable plates, cups and utensils for employee use.

Companies that want to take similar steps can find assistance and support through groups such as the Environmental Defense Fund, which helped develop green dining best practices.

The guide lists several steps food providers can take, including offering vegetable entrees and other low-carbon menu options, and purchasing coffees, teas and chocolates through rigorous certification programs that promote habitat protection and organic growing methods.

Are other Triad area businesses doing these things? That's where you readers come in. Contact me if you know of a company -- be it a large franchise, caterer or "mom and pop" restaurant -- that has incorporated or plans to implement several of these strategies.

I will include them in my new "Green Eats" blog feature and online map.

Diners also can motivate businesses to go green by sharing their concerns with servers, chefs and managers.

They can set an example by avoiding plastic straws and drink lids, bringing their own reusable beverage and to-go containers and not accepting or ordering water they don't intend to drink.

On the calendar

Get details for the following events by visiting www.Gotriadscene.com/event/cat/green.

* TS Designs will host the second annual Piedmont Green Gala from 2 to 8 p.m. today at 2053 Willow Springs Lane in Burlington.

* UNCG's Women's and Gender Studies program will host a community dialogue on the relationship between feminism and environmental movements at noon Wednesday in Phillips Lounge of Elliott University Center. Call 334-5673 for more information.

* Professors at UNC-Chapel Hill will give lectures on climate change and its local impacts, starting Oct. 8. $10 per lecture or $30 for all four lectures. Learn more by calling (919) 962-2643.

* Two separate green economy forums will take place in Charlotte and Durham on Oct. 8-9 and Oct. 23.

* Campout! Carolina returns for its third year Oct. 9-10. Earth Share of North Carolina promotes the statewide event as a way for families to have fun and save energy. To register, visit Campoutcarolina.org.

* The Rockingham County Local Foods Coalition will feature guest speaker Aaron Newton at its Oct. 13 meeting. Newton is the co-author of "A Nation of Farmers" and participates in a Concord incubator farm. Call 342-8230 for more information.

Morgan Josey Glover is content manager for goGreen Triad.com. Contact her at 373-7078 or morgan.josey@news-record.com.