February 24, 2010 – The world’s largest full-service restaurant brand announced Tuesday that it has begun a corporate-wide sustainable restaurant design initiative, and is committed to utilizing LEED certification standards in all new restaurants built, including certain restaurant remodels.

Darden's three largest brands – Red Lobster, Olive Garden and LongHorn Steakhouse – are designing eight restaurants to achieve LEED certification from the United States Green Building Council (USGBC). The company plans to apply learning’s from those eight restaurants to new restaurants and remodels across its portfolio in the future. The Olive Garden in Jonesboro, Ark., which opened for business last month, is the first of eight restaurants the company is designing to meet LEED standards. One more Olive Garden and two Red Lobsters are scheduled to open in 2010, followed by one Olive Garden, two Red Lobsters and one LongHorn Steakhouse in 2011.

Olive Garden's newest restaurant in Jonesboro, which was designed to achieve LEED certification, features a number of sustainable design elements. They include: 

• Recycled Building Materials – Supplies such as sheetrock, doors and windows were made from recycled content. The flooring features carpet squares made from 100% recycled materials.
• Increased Use of Natural Light – Incorporating more windows more frequently into the building's exterior reduces the need for artificial light.
• Energy Efficient Equipment and Fixtures – Items such as Energy Star rated equipment and low-flow water nozzles in the kitchen, as well as automatic faucets in the restrooms, reduce energy and water usage. New LED light bulbs that utilize seven watts of energy and last up to 50,000 hours replace bulbs that used 75 watts and had to be changed two to three times a year.
• Reclaimed Heat – To supplement the heating of hot water in the kitchen, heat expelled from the condensing units of the HVAC system and the Freezer/Cooler condensing units is reclaimed and used to heat water.

Darden recently opened its new corporate headquarters facility in Orlando which is on track to earn LEED Gold certification from the USGBC. It's the largest LEED Gold new construction project in the state of Florida.