George McKerrow Jr., right, president and CEO of Ted’s Montana Grill, talks to students and faculty yesterday about "Growing Green Leaders." Richard Brush, dean of Johnson & Wales’ Hospitality College, left, moderates the talk.

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The Providence Journal / Mary Murphy

Johnson & Wales University students yesterday were urged to be environmentalists as they set out on careers in the restaurant and hospitality industry.

“If we make changes on small things, we can make a big difference,” restaurateur George McKerrow Jr. told an audience of about 60. Because of the restaurant industry’s size and the way it uses resources, those small changes can easily multiply, he said. “We use five times as much energy, on average, as a typical retail business.”

McKerrow, along with media magnate Ted Turner, founded Ted’s Montana Grill in 2002. The restaurant chain focuses on environmental awareness through practices such as using recycled paper products, water-conserving bathroom fixtures, and wooden stir sticks instead of plastic.

“Never hesitate to ask. Never hesitate to challenge yourself to do it differently than the status quo,” McKerrow said. “Just by asking, you can make a difference.”

He cited the example of straws used at his restaurant. He didn’t want to use plastic, but couldn’t find anyone making paper straws. He contacted a company that stopped making them in 1970 and asked whether they could still do it.

The company told him the paper-straw machine was in storage somewhere but could be put back into service. After several tries, the company relearned how to make paper straws.

By that time, Ted’s Montana Grill was not the only customer for the straws. The cruise industry, citing damage done to the world’s oceans by plastic straws, started buying the paper ones. They were joined by other buyers in Europe.

As a result of McKerrow’s question, the straw company built a factory dedicated to making paper straws.

The cost to the Ted’s chain is relatively small: a half-cent more per straw, but with 5.6 million straws a year, that adds up.

“I don’t think we should look for large, quantum leaps. We have to do small things,” he told the students, urging them to look for “one small thing to do that will turn into something big tomorrow.”

An example of that, he said: if every restaurant in the country converted its used grease to biodiesel, it would create 350 million gallons of the fuel.

McKerrow also said his restaurant has helped protect American bison by putting them on the restaurant’s menu.

By making the animal an economic commodity, it gives ranchers an incentive to husband more of the animals. “We create demand to increase the size of the herd,” he said. The larger herd, in turn, promotes a stronger gene pool and better prospects for the long-term survival of the species.

He also said regulators should exercise greater control — through quotas — over America’s marine fisheries to prevent the collapse of food-fish populations. He called himself an advocate of farm-raised fishing, though he called it the lesser of two evils.

He also shared some of his secrets for success.

“Be passionate about what you do, and be dedicated to quality,” he said. “The harder I work, the luckier I get.”

pparker@projo.com