Kalpana Waikar, founder and CEO of Inspired Indian Cooking, couldn’t imagine reaching the sustainability goals of her restaurant anywhere besides Evanston.
Committed to using energy-efficient and sustainable appliances, she said she is extremely grateful for what the Sustain Evanston grant, which gives funding to make businesses more environmentally friendly, has offered her small business.
“I was really focused on having a really energy-efficient space,” Waikar said. “If I had not received the grant money, I probably wouldn’t have been able to afford the equipment.”
Waikar said she took the grant money she received in 2023 and 2024, a total of $25,000, to completely gut and renovate her restaurant space, which is located on 914 Noyes St., with induction cooktops, Energy Star-certified refrigerators and updated electric appliances.
In 2023, Sustain Evanston began allocating a total of $250,000 to help local businesses become more sustainable. This year, the city’s total allocation increased to $750,000 with grant applications reopening on Feb. 17.
It is not just Waikar’s restaurant that is closer to a more sustainable future. Cesar Marron, head brewer and managing partner of Sketchbook Brewing Company, said he immediately applied for the grant in 2023.
“I have always been very involved in everything locally related to environmental sustainability,” said Marron, who co-founded the brewery around 10 years ago. “My personal belief is that if we want to be on this Earth for much longer, we need to treat it as a place that we love to live.”
Marron said he used the Sustain Evanston grant to upgrade to more energy efficient refrigeration — one of the brewery’s biggest expenses — and a larger cooler for the Evanston location.
The Sustain Evanston grant also has been instrumental in helping the Woman’s Club of Evanston with a $90,000 renovation, member Michelle Salazar said.
“It updated us and made us feel much more relevant,” Salazar said. “The members feel really good about that.”
The Woman’s Club of Evanston switched its old kitchen equipment, which Salazar said was over 50 years old, to electric.
Salazar said companies and charities cannot make such large sustainability investments without support from the city.
“It’s a big chunk of change for a charity to take on because that’s money that would be going to the community otherwise,” Salazar said.
Like Salazar, Waikar said she understands the difficulty of reaching sustainability goals as a small business.
Marron also said the city has great goals to achieve energy efficiency, which can only be achieved by far-reaching involvement of local organizations and businesses.
“It depends on each and every one of us,” Marron said.
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