Building on decades of work on sustainability issues, our logistics suppliers are set to substantially increase their carbon-cutting efforts. How will they do this?

Let’s take a trip around the world

In Europe

HAVI, one of McDonald’s logistics suppliers, announced a five-year joint plan with vehicle maker Scania in 2017 to improve its carbon footprint. The plan aims to significantly reduce the number of diesel-powered vehicles it uses, and convert around 70% of its fleet to alternative fuels in a number of European countries by 2021. By the end of 2018, HAVI had already achieved 30% of the target. With the momentum of the newly approved science-based targets behind them, we look forward to continued acceleration of their plan to minimize emissions.

McDonald’s Switzerland

In McDonald's Switzerland, 59% of our logistics Supplier HAVI's distribution for McDonald's is covered by railway. Last year, this avoided around 490,000 liters of diesel, and meant a reduction of approximately 1.2 million kg of CO2 emissions.

McDonald’s Germany

McDonald’s Germany, via HAVI, have switched to liquefied natural gas (LNG) and by the end of June will boast one of the largest LNG fleets in the country – an impressive acceleration strategy to stay ahead of local regulations on diesel bans and assuring sustainable delivery to restaurants.

McDonald’s Sweden

Another innovative initiative is an exciting pilot on silent overnight deliveries at several McDonald’s restaurants in Stockholm to overcome the bans on city center deliveries at night due to noise.  The pilot, a cooperation between the City of Stockholm, HAVI, KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, the EU, McDonald’s and Scania, features a silent electric powered vehicle to help switch the delivery during the night and avoid early morning rush hour. Take a look at the recent local McDonald’s TV commercial which features the test truck.

The CO2 emissions created by deliveries to McDonald’s restaurants will be monitored in real time, and are expected to fall by 15 - 40%, depending on route, fuel used and traffic conditions.

McDonald’s U.K.

50% of the Martin Brower U.K. fleet runs on biodiesel from McDonald’s used cooking oil; the rest of the fleet uses biodiesel generated in other ways. This has led to an annual reduction of over 11,700 tons of CO2 emissions when compared to ultra-low-sulphur diesel (ULSD).

McDonald’s U.S.

Martin Brower uses varying levels of biodiesel in many countries where they operate, to reduce our dependence and use of fossil fuel diesel. In 2018, Martin Brower started using renewable natural gas in its delivery vehicles in the U.S. Not only is this fuel up to 70% cleaner than diesel, but it is also the world’s first commercially available transportation fuel made entirely from types of organic waste.

Through these actions, and many others from our supplier network and Franchisees, McDonald’s expects to prevent 150 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions from being released into the atmosphere by 2030. This is the equivalent of taking 32 million passenger cars off the road for an entire year or planting 3.8 billion trees and growing them for 10 years.