drought

California Chef Gets Creative, Saves Water by Using Air Compressor

As California figures out how to deal with this historic drought, everyone is looking to cut back on water use.

That includes one California chef who has found a way to save hundreds of gallons of water per day. He does it using air and electricity.

Big Sur Chef John Cox bought an air compressor for $200 off Amazon a few weeks ago. Originally, he got it for cleaning the kitchen, but now his staff is using it to pre-wash plates before the plates go in the dishwasher.

The cost? Less than $1 per day in electricity.

The new method is saving the restaurant 800 gallons of water per day, or nearly 300,000 gallons per year.

“I mean, we just have no choice as an industry right now,” said Cox. “We have to save water. So this is a pretty easy way to do it, I think."

If California's 60,000 restaurants all switched to compressed air to pre-clean plates, they could save more than 17 billion gallons of water per year.

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