The huge section of tree trunk that doubles as a greeter desk sets the scene, no mistake. Water House, in Shoreditch, East London, is a new eco-friendly restaurant with knobs on.

Owned by the charitable regeneration agency Shoreditch Trust, and developed in collaboration with the restaurant advisers Eat Green, a whopping 48 per cent of the profits from the restaurant goes back into improving the area. Where else can you dine out in London at this level and do some good for the community and climate at the same time? Well, at an increasing number of places, actually.

When it comes to food, the nation is becoming increasingly environmentally aware. According to a recent survey, conducted by Westfield London, the people behind a retail development that will open in West London this year, nearly two thirds of all UK adults believe that it's important to source food locally, hang whether it's organic or not, placing the drive to reduce carbon footprint as more important.

At Water House, it's also less about whether the ingredients are organic or not and more about sourcing supplies as locally as possible, in addition to a host of other green measures. Situated on the Regent's Canal, Water House uses ambient water temperature from the canal to provide its cooling and heating system; solar panels to provide hot water and renewable electricity; there are hydro-carbon fridges; water is filtered and bottled on site; a wormery digests raw food; a hot composter manages the garden's waste; an experimental system transforms cooking oil into a compostable substance; and the kitchen runs on hydroelectricity.

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The chef and co-proprietor is Arthur Potts, who co-founded the restaurant consultancy Eat Green, and this isn't his first such venture. In November 2006 he opened London's first eco-friendly training restaurant, Acorn House, near King's Cross, to rave reviews. He has just taken things on a few steps further at Water House.

“This is not something I've done to get more press; this is what I truly believe in,” insists Potts, who before founding Eat Green was head chef at Jamie Oliver's Fifteen restaurant. “We are empowering our customers to dine out without creating such a big carbon footprint.”

Both of his restaurants are unusually busy, it's true. The eco goings-on were the main reason I paid a visit (and the draw for the majority of diners, Potts has concluded) and, of course, there was the perfectly steamed (sustainable) cod with beurre blanc, and moist, zingy, lemon and polenta cake for afters.

It's also the main reason why Potts's staff come to work for him. He gets ten e-mails a week from prospective employees declaring an interest, a rarity in an industry that puts the difficulties of recruiting staff as its number one headache. “They tell me they are passionate about the environment and have always wanted to combine it with food.”

An eco-restaurant in every town?

Micheal Pyner, the chef executive of Shoreditch Trust, can't help giving a wry grin as he watches the mostly middle-class clientele at both Water House and Acorn House munching on his food, the profits of which get ploughed back into the particularly deprived community in this part of South Hackney.

He has already spent some of the profits (Acorn House turned over its first £1 million after 14 months) on a combined heat and power programme (CHP), burning rubbish to generate electricity. And he has plans for many more schemes that will benefit the community, using the proceeds of both restaurants and, hopefully, many more to come. If Pyner and Potts get their way, there will be a Water House in every town. As well as two more being developed - in Amble, north of Newcastle, and Derry, in Northern Ireland - there are four more similar restaurant projects in the offing and no shortage of interest from elsewhere.

“Each will have its own name, and its own distinct identity, and each will build on its context,” says Pyner. For example, he's looking at wind power for the Amble restaurant, which sits right next to the North Sea.

And there's no reason why they should stop at opening restaurants, says Pyner. “We want to do other associated things in the long run, such as buying a farm, or opening a chain of green laundries.”

Of course, they both think that the industry should be doing much more. “Chefs might be using sustainable fish now, but what are they doing about their rubbish?” asks Potts. Quite.

About 85% of UK restaurants recycle

The hospitality bible Caterer & Hotelkeeper magazine ran a series of green-focused issues a few months ago in an effort to spur the industry on, and it publishes a Green Zone on its website (www.caterersearch.com) to encourage more eco-friendly practices.

And British restaurants are becoming greener: an online Caterer & Hotelkeeper survey, published last summer, showed that a third of its 500 industry respondents had already set formal sustainability targets. Nearly 85 per cent have recycling measures in place and just under half are sourcing sustainable or ethical products.

Other restaurants, of course, have been quietly doing it for years. At St John in Clerkenwell, East London, which is well known for its carefully sourced British produce, most of its staff cycle to work, and it is just about to have its carbon footprint measured. “Then we will find ways of reducing it even more,” says Trevor Gulliver, the owner. Hehas even toyed with the idea of growing ingredients on the restaurant roof to cut food miles further. “But we never really shout about any of this stuff; we don't want to sound too smug. I think you have to be careful about that. It's important to do these things quietly,” he says.

Strattons Hotel and Restaurant in Swaffham, Norfolk, has been doing green things quietly since it opened in 1990. “It's sad that this is known as being ‘green'. It's just common sense to us,” says Vanessa Scott, the co-owner. “We were doing it way before people really understood what it was all about.” But it was a struggle to begin with. “Of course it would have been much easier to use a central supplier, but we showcase more than 50 amazing producers and people come here because of it,” she says.

Green hotels

It's the same story at Peterstone Court and its sister hotel, The Manor in Powys, Wales. Their orig-inal purpose was to reduce their impact on the National Park, which surrounds them, and to encourage ecological living on a much wider scale. They can now brag that produce travels only seven miles from farm to plate. Their latest eco-wheeze is using sheep's wool for insulating new building projects and placing recycling bins in guest bedrooms.

It was Bordeaux Quay in Bristol, though, that put eco-gastronomy - as many now call it - on the map. The trail-blazing “green” restaurant complex, which opened in summer 2006, houses a brasserie, bar, deli, bakery and cookery school. It boasts a resident sustainability manager and sources as much as it can within a 50-mile radius, and is led by its reluctantly evangelical chef-proprietor, Barny Haughton.

“It [Bordeaux Quay] is saying that the restaurant world can do better. That to take responsibility for energy consumption, food miles, water and waste, and to be aware of its potential role in the future of farming systems, animal welfare, food education and the environment should be the prerequisite for all good restaurants,” he says.

Tom Aikens, the Michelin-starred wunderkind, would agree. He is greening up Chelsea with his stable of increasingly eco-friendly restaurants, the latest of which is Tom's Place. This posh fish and chip shop sources fish that is line-caught, from sustainable Marine Stewardship Council-approved suppliers, it prints menus on recycled paper, and serves food in corn-starch boxes.

“It was a dawning, rather than an epiphany,” says Aikens. “Once we had worked out that we were going to use only sustainable fish, we thought we might as well go down the rest of the green route. And the stuff you discover along the way; it's scary how much waste a restaurant produces. Yes, the project cost about 15 per cent more, and there were lots of thing we just couldn't do, but we have tried to do as much as we can. It takes time and effort, but it's satisfying when you start to make a difference.”

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