McDonald's leads green drive

Elaine Grundy • Published 26 Jan 2012 17:30

A GREENOCK restaurateur is leading the way forward when it comes to reducing waste.

Following a successful pilot project at his premises, local McDonald's franchisee Steve Tomlin has ambitious plans for a zero waste strategy for his business.

Over the last 18 months, Steve has been working with the William Tracey Group, the McDonald's environment team and other franchisees on developing solutions that will lead to no waste generated by the restaurant going to landfill.

Steve said: "Not only does waste have a potential impact on the environment, it also has a cost impact on the business. With our trucks being powered by bio-diesel made from our used cooking oil and new solutions developed with William Tracey, we are increasingly looking at waste as a potential resource rather than a cost."

McDonald's has introduced a number of innovative environmental programmes and initiatives in recent years across its UK restaurants.

The used cooking oil from the kitchens of 97 per cent of the restaurants - including Steve's - is used to make bio-diesel to power the fleet making deliveries across the country. The remaining three per cent of restaurants are currently working to develop solutions that will allow their oil to be recycled and used to produce bio-diesel.

Steve was keen to build on these initiatives. He said: "As a business, we have established systems in place to minimise waste and our immediate priority is to prevent waste and recycle wherever possible. However I wanted to work with local partners to see if we could find cost-effective solutions for some of our waste streams such as food waste, where recycling is not possible."

Any food waste from the restaurant's kitchen is collected and sent to a process which digests this to methane used for electricity generation and compost. All other non-food waste in the kitchen is sorted by the William Tracey Group for recycling.

Solutions have also been identified for waste and packaging disposed of by customers in the restaurant. In many cases, this packaging cannot be recycled after it has been mixed with foodstuffs.

Jez Langhorn, McDonald's vice president for environment, has praised this local partnership.

He said: "As a modern, progressive company, we recognise our responsibility to protect and preserve the environment and one of the many ways in which we are doing this is through our work to minimise waste.

"We are committed to finding solutions to divert waste from landfill but in many parts of the UK, the infrastructure is not yet in place for us to do so.

"We're delighted that Steve and his team have shown such great initiative and worked hard to identify local, cost-effective solutions, developing a partnership that will produce significant and sustainable environmental benefits."

Following the successful pilot at the Greenock restaurant, Steve is hoping to roll it out across his other restaurants in Dumbarton, Balloch and Clydebank and other franchisees in Scotland are also looking to implement these solutions.

Tweet

This article appeared in Greenock Telegraph 26 Jan 12

Return to the main index, get more from this section or browse our News archives.

Follow @greenocktele