Chain Restaurants jumping on the "green" bandwagon

Ted's Montana Grill, run by Ted Turner of CNN fame, is a chain that seems to have a genuine eco-conscience. Every restaurant in the chain exclusively serves bottled sodas (so that the glass can be recycled) and they use paper straws that are fully biodegradable (rather than plastic). Their cornstarch based to go containers break down in under 50 days.The mainstay of their business is bison, which is a minimally processed, 100% natural and sustainable meat with a lower cholesterol and higher protein ratio than beef. I think that Turner has been single-handedly responsible for bringing the Buffalo back into mainstream American consciousness -- they became virtually extinct in the 1870s thanks to a mass slaughter led by European settlers. Most people forget that they're actually a natural part of the North American ecosystem, and now today, Turner has the largest herd in the country.

Meena,

That's great that a chain restaurant is giving out green tips to kids on the placemats. I've worked with several restaurants over the years on waste reduction issues. It's often easier for individual restaurants to green their operations than chains. Once I tried to switch a chain salad bar restaurant over to compost their food waste. They said they served 800 meals a day and were too busy to compost. It seemed like a matter of scraping leftover food into one bin instead of another but they refused. There must have been another issue going on.