McDonald's to Recycle Oil to Biodiesel

02 July, 2007 12:00:00

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McDonald's Corp said on Monday it is to convert its British delivery fleet to run on biodiesel made largely from its own recycled cooking oil.

Matthew Howe, senior vice president with McDonald's UK, said the fast food restaurant should eventually be able to replace the six million liters of diesel its 155 vehicles fleet used last year with cooking oil from its 1,200 restaurants in Britain.

McDonald's said the move will save more than 1,650 tonnes of carbon every year - the equivalent of removing 2,424 family cars from the roads annually.

The biodiesel will initially be made up of 85 percent used cooking oil collected from around 900 McDonald's restaurants and 15 percent from pure rapeseed oil.

The announcement comes after a near-year long trial run by the group, which saw 150,000 litres of used cooking oil converted to biodiesel.

McDonald's delivery vehicles have since been running on 95 per cent diesel and 5 per cent biodiesel.

It will collect oil from 900 of its 1,214 outlets each week, after which the cooking fat will be taken to a separation tank in East Anglia to remove the food particles before being converted to biodiesel at a plant in Milton Keynes.

Half of the 45-vehicle fleet which operates from McDonald's Basingstoke distribution centre is to be converted to run on biodiesel.

McDonald's already runs a similar initiative in Austria, where its lorries have been using biodiesel for a few years.

The group has not revealed the cost of converting its fleet, but said that while it would be out of pocket initially, its plans to use biodiesel should eventually see it save money, with the fuel costing less to convert than the price per litre of diesel.

McDonald's has been upping its green credentials in recent years in response to critics, such as Greenpeace.

Earlier this year it started selling coffee certified by the Rainforest Alliance in its UK restaurants and last year agreed to stop using soya from newly-deforested land in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil.

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Comments (1 posted):

on 24 October, 2008 05:13:58

already read this article but it was not in the uk but in the philippines, but anyway, i think that recycling oil could be the best way to save money on using regular gas...