The National Restaurant Association has announced Tuesday that it will work with Georgia-Pacific Professional to identify best practices in the areas of recycling and sustainability, both of which it says are key components of profitability for the restaurant industry.

“Georgia-Pacific Professional’s commitment to supporting our ‘Sustainability & Social Responsibility’ imperative is instrumental in advancing the goals of the National Restaurant Association and the industry at large,” says NRA President/CEO Dawn Sweeney, who is also president/CEO of the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation (NRAEF).

Through an unrestricted research grant from Georgia-Pacific Professional, the NRA will conduct an in-depth study of consumer perceptions related to restaurant operator recycling practices and the correlating effects on consumer traffic and restaurant sales.

The study will also examine current recycling practices of restaurant operators and provide a gap analysis between consumer recycling demand and current best practices of restaurant operators.

“Consumers are putting increasing demands on restaurants to be more active in managing their environmental impact, and restaurant owners have consistently shown that they want to meet this challenge while continuing to be cost competitive,” says John Mulcahy, Georgia-Pacific Professional's vice president for strategy and category vision.

The research is part of the new enterprise partnership between the NRA, the NRAEF and Georgia-Pacific. The partnership also includes Georgia-Pacific’s support for the NRAEF’s scholarship initiatives, the NRA’s Restaurant Hotel-Motel Show 2011 in Chicago in May and NRA advocacy initiatives.