Company Profile - McDonald’s
Back to Company Profiles Home
With over 30,000 locations around the world, McDonald’s has an awful lot of kitchen using vast amounts of energy to heat their meals and cool their drinks and desserts. While McDonald’s wants to be seen to be as green as possible, any efforts to reduce their carbon footprint is limited by the fact that the majority of their locations are actually franchises, owned by a franchisee, not the corporation.
Certainly, there are some hardworking franchisees that have started up initiatives to reduce their carbon emissions that have been spread to other locations, and these individuals should be commended for their efforts. At the same time, there are some franchisees who see some of these environmentally friendly changes as a threat to their bottom line.
As a company, the biggest impact on their carbon footprint comes from the electricity used as the individual store level. To fight this, they are looking to become more efficient in their energy use, examining alternative refrigerants, and cutting waste through recycling and reusing materials wherever possible.
McDonald’s headquarters provides all their franchises with guidance and support to improve the energy efficiency, though very few changes are required of the individual restaurants. McDonald’s continues to work with their suppliers to reduce waste and packaging and develop more energy efficient equipment, especially for inside their kitchens. As well, they will not permit the destruction of any rainforest area to be used to raise cattle for their beef supply, although it is hard to say how much of their beef they import from Brazil, Indonesia, or the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Along with Coke and Unilever, McDonald’s helped pioneer the Refrigerants, Naturally! organisation, which was created to find more environmentally friendly ways to keep products cool. In 2005, they were awarded the EPA Climate Protection Award for their work in this area – a fact that is stressed on their website!
In their restaurants, you will often find one of many environmental education programs aimed at kids, put on in partnership with Conservation International. The latest such program has be done in conjunction with the ‘Bee Movie’, and is called ‘Bee Good to the Planet’. It is certainly important to teach tomorrow’s leaders about the need to reduce their carbon footprint, but at this point in their lives it is something they don’t have much control over. These efforts are perhaps better aimed at the parents of these kids who pull up to the restaurants in their SUVs.
One area that the company has made excellent progress is in building and remodelling restaurants with energy efficiency in mind. In 2007, a
restaurant in Georgia became the first Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified McDonald’s. The location makes use of lots of windows for lighting, preferred parking for hybrid cars, a white roof to reflect the heat and energy efficient heating and cooling. As good an example as this store is, it still needs to be adopted in many more locations to have the kind of impact that is needed.
Around the world, many countries have pioneered their own green programs. McDonald’s UK deserves special mention as they only buy coffee that is Rainforest Alliance Certified, and has even started using recycled cooking oil in their biodiesel fuel. Unfortunately, these remain country specific initiatives. A handful of other recycling programs all seem to fit closely with their local guidelines instead of trying to become a leader in this field.
So How Do They Stack Up?
Business Strategy: 3.5/5 – despite the progress they have made, they could work more closely with suppliers to be more efficient and cost effective
Products & Services: 3/5 – this is really an average as some countries are higher and others are lower
Leading by Example: 3/5 – many locations are setting great examples, but until these are carried across the company, their overall example will be hindered
Overall: 3.2/5
|
Share This Story: |
