New 'eco-store' is testing recycling bins and techniques to minimize chain's impact on the environment. 

MILFORD, Conn. -- Subway is testing recycling bins, switching its napkins, cutlery and plastic cups and cutting down on the gasoline used to transport its restaurant supplies in an effort to minimize the chain's impact on the environment.

Subway is testing the new initiatives at a so-called "eco-store" it opened this month in Kissimmee, Fla. In addition to recycling bins, the restaurant was constructed using some recycled materials, and it uses more efficient heating and cooling systems, has plumbing systems that conserve water and uses high-efficiency lighting. 

Subway worked with the U.S. Green Building Council to develop the store and is planning to build others like it, The Wall Street Journal reports. 

If Subway can make recycling bins work, it could prompt other chains to add them too. Subway has about 22,000 locations in the U.S., making it the country's largest restaurant chain as measured by units. Starbucks has recycling bins at some cafes on the East Coast, but they don't accept the chain's paper coffee cups because those can't be recycled, notes the newspaper.

Nationally, Subway has switched to napkins that use 100 percent recycled materials, of which 60 percent is post-consumer recyclable material. Recycled material can include material such as wood chips, while post-consumer recycled material is paper that has already been used by consumers. Subway estimates it will save about 147,000 trees a year. 

Subway also switched to cutlery and plastic drinking cups made of polypropylene instead of polystyrene, which the company estimates will save 13,000 barrels of oil annually because it no longer needs to use as much of that material. The chain also will save gasoline after it reconfigured a facility in Utah that keeps it from having to slice deli meat in Iowa and send it to Colorado for distribution.