Applebee's builds green building -- la dee da
I was interested when I read the headline of an article on The Kansas City Star's online website: Applebee's goes bold with stand on the environment. I dove into the article expecting to find changes to the way their nearly 2000 restaurants nationwide handle waste. Instead of new water conservation methods or compost innovations, I found that Applebee's now has a new $47 million "green" headquarters complete with rain garden.
Don't get me wrong, I am all for green architecture. I think it's a fascinating area of new construction but giving up an old headquarters for a new one built with Brazilian wood from a managed forest is not a "bold" stance on the environment. In a company overview, Applebee's mentions that they are involved with "environment stewardship" but the only example I found was of the building of their new headquarters.
I understand that Applebee's restaurants are franchised so in a sense it is up to the owners to take steps to curb their environmental impact. However, if a corporation can tell someone how many slices of onion to put on a burger, they can tell them how to manage their energy consumption and waste. The restaurant industry is one of the worst environmental offenders. It's going to take a lot more than a new office to change that.
Don't get me wrong, I am all for green architecture. I think it's a fascinating area of new construction but giving up an old headquarters for a new one built with Brazilian wood from a managed forest is not a "bold" stance on the environment. In a company overview, Applebee's mentions that they are involved with "environment stewardship" but the only example I found was of the building of their new headquarters.
I understand that Applebee's restaurants are franchised so in a sense it is up to the owners to take steps to curb their environmental impact. However, if a corporation can tell someone how many slices of onion to put on a burger, they can tell them how to manage their energy consumption and waste. The restaurant industry is one of the worst environmental offenders. It's going to take a lot more than a new office to change that.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
6-15-2008 @ 7:12PM
karlkim1 said...
I am a General Manager for Coco's Bakery & Restaurants. We as a company, (corperate stores) have mandated many practices to reduce wasted energy, water, and gas. Every store does meter reads weekly on electic, gas, and water and send it in to the corperate office, and track our useage. We recently converted all our stores to a low flow 2 dish sprayhead water sprayer that saves 300-500 gallons of water per week, per store. We have mandatory settings, our thermostats are to be set at. We have utility companies send literature to the units on how and where our usage is divided, with tips on how to reduce usage. Our corperate office is not green, but the 197 units under our brand are:-)
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6-15-2008 @ 7:14PM
kelly.leahy said...
Thanks for the information. It sounds like you guys are making some great changes. I bet that it's helping out the bottom line too!