Company Spotlight - IHOPs

Restaurants have a lot of impact on the environment. They use a lot of energy cooking food and they use a lot of disposable packaging. IHOPs is one restaurant who is working towards being more sustainable and has announced many green initiatives for 2010. These include the following:

• Automatic plumbing fixtures to save water


• Waterless urinals and/or very low flow fixtures


• Optimizing energy by coodinating HVAC controls with the kitchen equipment


• Solar reflective windows


• Green cleaning products

IHOPs is also making efforts to green its packaging. They evaluate factors including the recycled content of their paper and plastic goods. IHOPs has removed 95% of all polystyrene packaging products used in their "to go" orders and have replaced it with 100% recyclable packaging. They also recycle the used cooking oil at most of their restaurants.

I want to give a special big thanks to the Chattanooga Plaza IHOPs right here in Midlothian. For the past several weeks, they have been saving their Florida Natural 1/2 gallon juice cartons for me to collect every Monday. I rinsed and cut the cartons so I can send them to MilkMuny. MilkMuny will turn this "garbage" into neat wallets and paid the Woolridge Elementary School Green Club 50 cents for every carton sent. To date, IHOPs has helped us raise $150! THANK YOU! Please contact me at gogreenwoolridge@gmail.com if you're interested in participating in the MilkMuny fundraiser.