Corporate Employees Identify and Activate Strategic Plans to Help Advance Company Goal of Making a Positive Difference in Society
McDonald’s Corp. today announced its biennial summary of innovation in the 2014 Global “Best of Green” report. “Best of Green” is a collection of best practices that illustrates progress in five categories — energy, recycling and waste, sustainable sourcing, engagement and greening the restaurants/workplace.
“The success of McDonald’s is built on the talent and ingenuity of the people in our system,” said Ken Koziol, McDonald’s chief restaurant officer. “Many of our best ideas come from company and franchisee employees at all levels, from all areas of the world. They see, first-hand, ways to improve practices that ultimately benefit the environment and the communities we serve.”
Highlights from the 2014 Best of Green report include:
- Recycling & waste: McDonald’s Pacific Sierra Region created a waste diversion execution manual enabling restaurants to deploy mixed recycling, organics recycling, or both, by providing checklists, shift huddles, and crew/customer engagement and education materials. The manual was initially piloted in 11 California Bay Area restaurants (Alameda County) resulting in an estimated diversion of 70 cubic yards of waste from landfills each week. The pilot program is being replicated in additional restaurants throughout the Pacific Sierra Region.
- Sustainable sourcing: McDonald’s USA, McDonald’s Canada and their franchisees are investing more than $6 million in a farmer technical assistance program. The initiative includes collaboration with TechnoServe and SCAN (Sustainable Commodities Assistance Network) to provide farmers with assistance and training to produce coffee in a more sustainable manner.
- Greening our restaurants: McDonald’s U.K., has launched a program for recycling restaurant employee uniforms. Uniforms will be collected annually by textile recyclers to be ‘recycled or ‘down-cycled’, shredded and used as mattress stuffing.
- Conserving water: A water reduction strategy in India — where water usage remains an area of concern — that saves an estimated 1.7 million gallons of water annually by installing low-flow urinals in 70 McDonald’s India restaurants.
Bob Langert, Vice President of Sustainability at McDonald’s, said, “We are on a mission to leverage resources and talent across our global system to challenge the status quo and make meaningful, positive changes to the environment.”
The “Best of Green” selection committee included representatives from McDonald’s, Business for Social Responsibility, Ceres, Conservation International, Foresight Design and World Wildlife Fund. Entries were judged based on innovation, environmental and business impacts, scalability and business integration.
“The stakeholders within McDonald’s are identifying practical, scalable and impactful ideas for their system,” said Sonal Pandya Dalal of Conservation International. “These good ideas can be shaped into programs that can make a real difference for people and the planet.”
McDonald’s is the world’s leading global food service retailer with more than 35,000 locations serving approximately 70 million customers in more than 100 countries each day. More than 80% of McDonald’s restaurants worldwide are owned and operated by independent local business men and women.
