My Life
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cDonalds Sweden is working to find innovative ways of providing fast, healthy, low-cost food for the majority of the people, while functioning as a sustainable operation – financially, socially, and environmentally. With the help of The Natural Step Sweden and 8,000 committed employees, in just five years McDonalds Sweden has reduced costs through numerous eco-efficiency programs, spurred new innovations, motivated and energized staff, and transformed their public image.
By studying the fundamental nature of their business through the lens of the TNS framework, McDonalds Sweden is moving beyond eco-efficency. Today, approximately half of the 160 Swedish McDonalds, the bakery, and the national headquarters run on renewable energy – hydropower. All new restaurants use water pipes made of recycled plastic instead of copper, wood framing instead of steel framing, and wood foundations instead of concrete foundations – overall, reducing construction material use by 5-10 percent. Research is currently underway at seven restaurants to develop a biological filter to clean exhaust from fry stations. The new technology uses bacteria to eat the oil and reuses remaining clean air to heat their restaurants. In addition, McDonalds Sweden serves organic milk and beef, recycles 97 percent of all restaurant waste, has significantly reduced distribution distances helping to cut fuel costs by over 30 percent, and has eliminated the need for over 1,200 tonnes of packaging material by changing to smarter packaging.
In Sweden, McDonalds occupies 75 percent of the fast-food hamburger market and generated revenues of approximately $350 million in 1998. The company has three primary business objectives – satisfied employees, satisfied customers, and profits – and understands that by developing and investing in the first, the rest will follow. According to Mats Lederhausen, Managing Director for McDonalds Sweden, “If you take all the resources you have as a company, the only thing that counts today is the human energy that you can pull together and with which you can do anything.” As stated in the companys Environment Program, “There is one very simple reason that McDonalds Sweden is concerned with the environment: the future. The future for us as people, and for our company. Everything we eat and everything we make and everything we sell comes directly from our earth.
Nature is, in theory as well as in practice, our livelihood.” In 1993, just as Lederhausen was settling into his new position, Dr. Karl-Henrik RobДÐrt addressed the companys top management in a two-day course on The Natural Step and sustainability. Immediately following the course, the participants began identifying innovations within their departments that would generate early pay-back and require relatively small investments of time and money, while Bertil Rosquist, the present Environmental Manager, was given the duty of setting up a structure for the companys environmental work. That same year, McDonalds Sweden established and educated an Environmental Board composed of top executives in the company. In addition, every store manager and owner/operator took a one-day course on The Natural Step.
By March 1995, the company had launched a multimedia training program that was developed in collaboration with TNS Sweden to assist in educating the entire workforce. The CD-ROM-based program illustrates a vision of a sustainable society, introduces the concept of an ecologically sustainable economy, and addresses how the principles of The Natural Step make sense within the context of McDonalds Swedens business. In the meantime, the companys environment team began producing an internal magazine, newsletter, and regular videos highlighting the companys environmental activities and progress. The team helps develop local environmental programs, reducing water and energy consumption at the restaurants, ensuring proper waste separation, and working in the communities. To date 3,000 employees have been educated in TNS-based ecological sustainability which is being gradually integrated into all aspects of McDonalds Swedens operations.
McDonalds Swedens strategy works by focusing the companys environmental initiatives in seven different areas – waste separation and packaging, product distribution, construction projects, suppliers, office operations, energy reduction and conversion, and raw materials. So far the company has advanced its environmental agenda in each of these areas, and in certain cases has made advances in existing technologies and community infrastructure to accommodate its goals. For example, when McDonalds Sweden began its