Our Environment
At McDonald’s we recognise our responsibility to protect and preserve the environment. We are committed to analysing every aspect of our business in terms of impact on the environment and taking positive action.
To ensure a prosperous, healthy and sustainable future for everyone including our children and our children’s children – we need to use resources wisely today.
Environmental Policy
McDonald’s mission is to be the UK’s favourite family restaurant and we believe that this involves protecting the environment at the local and global level.We strive to ensure that our operations today do not have a negative impact on the lives of future generations.
Our goal is to achieve continuous environmental improvement. We will comply with all current legislation and, where possible, act in anticipation of future environmental legislation. We base our environmental programme around the hierarchy of ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’ and are committed to continuous review, evaluation and improvement of our programme. This includes setting targets, and monitoring and reporting on progress towards meeting them.
Our business impacts on the environment through:
Sourcing agricultural products and other materials to serve and build our restaurants
The operation of our restaurants and administrative functions.
Restaurant Operations – focusing on restaurant processes to:
Minimise impacts associated with odour, noise, effluent and emissions to the atmosphere
Reduce the amount of solid waste
Increase the value recovered from solid waste before its responsible disposal
Purchasing – focusing on procurement to:
Work in partnership with environmentally responsible suppliers to minimise the resources used and pollution associated with our products and operations.
New Restaurants – focusing on the development of new restaurants to:
Minimise the impact on the environment of local communities
Minimise the environmental impact of construction itself
Reduce the environmental impact of building materials and increase the energy efficiency of the restaurant design.
Our Employees – focusing on training and communicating with our employees to:
Increase the environmental awareness and relevant skills of all who work for McDonald’s.
Communication – focusing on communicating our environmental policy and procedures to:
Increase the environmental awareness of our suppliers and our customers
Improve liaison with local communities and their representatives.
Administration – focusing on our office-based activities to:
Improve energy efficiency and office recycling schemes, and to reduce the impacts associated with business travel and travel to work.
Litter
When people dispose of their rubbish irresponsibly it ends up as litter. We all share responsibility for the unsightly problem, as it becomes a nuisance and even a danger when it’s ignored.
Littering is a criminal offence. Individuals can receive a £50 fixed penalty fine from local authorities, or can be taken to court where the fine can be up to £2,500. Local authorities have to spend in excess of £400 million of public funds each year to clean up after people through litter clearance and street cleaning.
McDonald’s restaurants operate very much as part of their local community and quite naturally, therefore, take pride in the appearance of the local environment. Our commitment to our local communities is to tackle litter in as many different ways as we can.
McDonald’s was the first restaurant company to introduce ‘Litter Patrols’ in the UK. It is our company policy to conduct daily Litter Patrols, whereby members of staff will go out and pick up not only McDonald’s packaging, but also any other litter that has been carelessly discarded.
We provide litterbins outside all our restaurants and are one of the biggest sponsors of council provided litterbins in the UK.
All our packaging carries an anti-littering symbol to actively encourage our customers to dispose of their litter responsibly.
This message is supported by anti-littering signage in our restaurants and car parks.
We have actively supported Keep Britain Tidy activities since 1988. As part of this relationship, we have sponsored anti-littering educational materials, advertising and road shows.
Each year, large numbers of McDonald’s restaurants run clean-up events in their local communities, where our staff tackle ‘grotspots’ with schools, local authorities and community groups. In 2002, over 300 of these clean ups were held nationwide.
A few examples of initiatives held in 2002 are:
Yorkshire, Tom Conroy – Restaurant Manager from Wolviston, County Durham – spent two months developing and implementing a strategy so that 106 McDonald’s restaurants in the region could become involved in environmental protection projects. The projects ranged from clearing up a local lake, to giving a playground a new lick of paint and from litter picks to local children designing posters.
In Belfast, McDonald’s linked up with GMTV presenter Eamonn Holmes, who judged an Environmental Arts competition involving local schoolchildren. More than 300 pupils from St Joseph’s Primary School designed posters with a strong anti-littering message.
In Liverpool, staff from McDonald’s restaurants in Aigburth Road, Speke and Hunts Cross teamed up with Friends of Halewood Country Park to clear 30 bags of rubbish from the park in one afternoon.
In Pembroke Dock, South Wales, McDonald’s provided funding towards protective clothing for the Burton Coast care and Environmental Group, who actively involve the local community in cleaning up the neighbourhood. Projects initiated by the group include beach cleaning, painting, planting, litter picking and stream cleaning.
Staff from McDonald’s restaurants in Exeter conducted litter patrols on the Cathedral Green every hour through the spring and summer months to keep the historic and picturesque city square clear.
In Northern Ireland, McDonald’s has worked with Groundwork to develop a children’s play area in the new Mossley Estate, Newton abbey. The new play facility provides outdoor play equipment for pre-school children.
“While the fast food industry makes £5 billion a year, only McDonald’s devote any kind of resources to tackling litter.” Alan Woods, Chief Executive, Keep Britain Tidy.
“It’s good to see a business taking its commitment to the environment so seriously and to see some of its best customers doing their bit as well.” Councillor June Orton, Reading Town Council.
“McDonald’s restaurants are the only major chain to actively clean up litter outside their premises. We greatly appreciate the initiatives of McDonald’s staff in supporting local community litter clean ups, particularly during our national campaign in April.” Deborah Bell, Keep Britain Tidy’s Regional Director for Yorkshire.
“It’s fantastic to see the realisation of a community group’s dreams with the completion of this project.” Mary McKee, Executive Director, Groundwork, Northern Ireland.
Waste
McDonald’s Waste Management strategy is based on the hierarchy:
Design / Reduce / Reuse / Recycle / Disposal
Design
One of the most effective ways to reduce environmental impacts is to ensure that they don’t happen in the first place – i.e. to design them out! At McDonald’s, we constantly challenge both ourselves and our suppliers to find ways to improve efficiency, effectiveness and environmental performance. An example is the design of bulk containers for delivering ketchup to restaurants. Ketchup is now provided in a ‘Bag in Box’ – a soft, plastic bag in a cardboard box, replacing hard plastic jugs and resulting in a waste reduction of 25%. A similar approach has been taken for the provision of soft drink syrups – with the syrup provided in either a soft, plastic bag inside a reusable, plastic box, or in large, stainless steel tanks that are cleaned and reused.
Some recent innovations in restaurant design have also reaped environmental rewards. Many of our new restaurants now have Condiment Bars installed for our customers. At these bars, customers fill small paper cups with ketchup and other sauces from in-built bulk containers, reducing the use of individual plastic sachets. Other condiments are also available and can be collected by the customer in only the quantities that they require, rather than receiving a ‘standard’ portion with their purchase.
Reduce
Our restaurants are continually seeking ways to reduce their solid waste. One way of doing this is ensuring no wastage of materials in the kitchen. We use computer systems to monitor the amount of food sold at different times throughout each day. With this information, restaurants only order and prepare just the right amount of food that will be sold, with the majority of restaurants wasting less than 1% of their food stock.
We also try to ensure that we only give our customers the minimal amount of packaging per product. McDonald’s has undertaken significant research and testing to reduce the amount of material used in each item of packaging. Lighter, thinner packaging means less raw materials and therefore less solid waste. In 2002, changes to packaging designs and materials reduced our usage of paper by 78,058 kilograms and plastic by 230,953 kilograms.
Reuse
McDonald’s will reuse delivery packaging wherever possible in accordance with food safety laws. The delivery trays and crates used for all our buns, muffins, milkshake and sundae mix are returned to suppliers for reuse. This avoids the use of significant amounts of cardboard.
We also operate a scheme in many restaurants whereby used corrugated cardboard French fry boxes are returned to a central distribution point for sale to industry for a second time use before recycling. Revenue from this scheme is given to RMCC (Ronald McDonald Children’s Charities).
Recycle
All of our restaurants have a target to recycle 100% of their corrugated cardboard. Cardboard constitutes approximately 30% of the average restaurant’s total waste and, as such, this recycling activity diverts a significant amount of waste from landfill. Used cooking oil represents 10% of a restaurant’s total waste, and is also recycled via local collectors at regional refineries into animal feedstuffs, biodiesel and technical lubricants.
UK legislation requires McDonald’s to recycle a proportion of the packaging that we sell to customers. We currently meet this responsibility by paying an annual fee to the Valpak compliance scheme. Valpak use this fee to recycle packaging waste on our behalf.
Our restaurants also promote recycling by purchasing recycled products themselves, such as 100% recycled kitchen towel rolls, toilet paper and outdoor furniture made from recycled plastic.
Another recent initiative has been the introduction of a number of recycling banks on our restaurant sites to encourage our customers to recycle.
Disposal
Where we cannot reduce, reuse or recycle our waste, we make sure that we use the safest and most responsible means of waste disposal available. We make sure that all of our waste contractors hold the necessary licences to collect our waste and provide us with the appropriate legal documentation for each waste collection.
Packaging
McDonald’s use packaging to ensure our food is fresh, hot, convenient and, most importantly, safe. We are always looking at ways to reduce the amount of packaging we use and to improve the environmental performance of packaging materials.
Decisions on packaging style and materials are based on a variety of requirements. Firstly, we need to examine how the various food products behave in the packaging after cooking.
Does the product remain fresh?
Does the product remain hot?
Does the packaging protect the customer from injury?
Other considerations include the availability and cost of different packaging materials; the appearance of the packaging; the operational efficiency for our restaurant staff; hygiene/food safety; the portability of the packaging; customer satisfaction; environmental impacts arising from the sourcing; production and manufacture of the packaging; and waste disposal/recycling options.
One of our latest packaging innovations has been the development of packaging board from post-industrial recycled paper.
This means that we are using the off-cut material from industry paper cuttings to make our packaging. The board consists of 72% post-industrial recycled paper fibres, 28% virgin paper fibres and a grease resistant coating. This mix enables us to maximise the use of recycled materials, whilst still providing a totally safe product for food delivery. This type of packaging is used for many of our hamburgers, fruit pie cartons, French fry and Chicken McNuggets cartons, and a number of New Tastes Menu items.
Many other non-food items contain recycled materials. Items containing 100% post-consumer material (ie materials which have been used by the public – such as newspapers – and then collected for recycling are drink carriers, bags, napkins and toilet paper.
Our goal is continuous improvement, and we are working to identify other materials and ways to reduce the impact of our packaging.
Restaurants
We aim to reduce the environmental impact of our restaurant operations – such as restaurant construction, energy consumption, noise and odour – and their effect on our neighbours. An Environmental Manual, audit and training programme have been developed, and are available to all restaurants. Using these tools, restaurants are able to monitor their environmental performance and set goals for improvement.
McDonald’s utilises a modular method of building construction, where each section of the restaurant is pre-built in a factory. This means that when it comes to the actual restaurant construction, each of the sections are simply connected together, significantly reducing construction waste and shortening the building time.
We are continuously looking to reduce our use of energy. We make use of technology and efficient practices in restaurants, such as:
Light sensors are installed in all new restaurants to turn off lighting when it is not needed
All restaurants use low energy light bulbs
Computerised energy management systems are used to operate lighting, plant operation, heating and airflow – ensuring that equipment is shutdown at the correct times
All restaurants in Scotland are now purchasing ‘green electricity’ (power generated from renewable sources) for 10% of their energy requirements
Ongoing energy surveys and staff education campaigns are conducted to encourage good practices, such as turning off lights and equipment when they are not required.
McDonald’s is also a corporate member of the European Commission’s Green light programme – an ongoing, voluntary programme to reduce the energy consumption from lighting throughout Europe.
Whilst noise and cooking odour emissions from our restaurants have no significant, long-term environmental impact, we recognise that both these factors can cause short-term nuisance to the local community. We combat odour through sophisticated exhaust air systems, involving electrostatic precipitators and labyrinth systems. We emphasise the importance of managing noise to our staff and this is reinforced through our restaurant Environmental manual and audit.
Suppliers
McDonald’s has an Environmental Management programme for all of our food and paper suppliers.
This programme addresses environmental impacts associated with growing, processing, converting, packaging and distributing food and packaging items. Under this programme, we work with our suppliers towards mutually established environmental goals and minimum standards. All suppliers complete an annual performance rating process for environmental management, which then forms part of their annual business review.
In addition to our food and paper suppliers, we also work closely with our distribution company to minimise environmental impacts associated with deliveries to our restaurants. We are constantly looking for ways to reduce our fleet mileage and fuel consumption through the use of composite vehicles capable of carrying chilled, frozen and ambient cargoes, and by stream lining deliveries.
A recent review of our delivery schedules has delivered annual savings of:
1,560,000 less kilometres driven
600,000 less litres of fuel
55,714 less hours of required refrigeration time
We recycle all tyres and wooden pallets used by our distribution service.
For more information on McDonald's environmental practices, please contact our Environment Manager on 0870 241 3300.
Or write to:
Environment Manager,
McDonald's Restaurants Ltd,
11-59 High Road, East Finchley, London, N2 8AW.
