GURNEE Ill. Chipotle Mexican Grill’s wind-powered restaurant here is so green, it's gone platinum.
The fast-casual chain said Thursday its Illinois restaurant has earned the platinum-level Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.
The Chipotle unit is the first restaurant to achieve the Green Building Council's highest level of certification, a spokeswoman for the council said. In the past several months, several restaurant companies have sought and achieved some level of LEED certification for certain locations, including Subway, KFC, McDonald’s, Dunkin’ Donuts and Denny’s.
The Chipotle restaurant, which opened last fall, has a 6-foot kilowatt wind turbine that generates about 10 percent of the store’s electricity. The unit’s walls were made out of recycled drywall, recycled barn materials and primers and paints that contain fewer chemicals. There are also LED lightning, highly efficient faucets and toilets, and Energy Star-rated kitchen equipment. In addition, the restaurant’s landscape is irrigated with rainwater collected in a 2,500-gallon underground water cistern.
Chipotle managed the planning, design and construction of the Gurnee restaurant in conjunction with the Green Building Council, a nonprofit group that helps private entities create or retrofit buildings to be environmentally friendly.
“Our team worked hard to ensure that sustainable elements that made sense for this location were seamlessly incorporated into the design of the restaurant, while still giving it the iconic look of Chipotle,” said Steve Ells, founder, chairman and co-chief executive of the more than 860-unit, Denver-based chain.
LEED is a rating system awarded to buildings that satisfy green building criteria, such as sustainable sites, water efficiency, innovation and design. Certified, silver, gold and platinum levels are awarded based on the total number of points earned within each LEED category.
Contact Dina Berta at [email protected].