Zero Waste Partnership accomplishes Scottish first for McDonald's Franchise

Over the last 18 months the William Tracey Group has been working with McDonald's franchisee Steve Tomlin to drive waste produced at Steve's McDonald's Greenock franchise away from landfill, a move which makes both environmental and economical sense for business owners today.

Any food waste from the restaurant's kitchen is collected by William Tracey Group and sent for Anaerobic Digestion, a process which digests this material into methane used for electricity generation and compost. The William Tracey Group's food recycling service is the latest service to be launched which provides 100% recycling route for a waste stream which may have otherwise gone to landfill. All other non-food waste in the kitchen comes to the William Tracey Groups 10 hectare site at Linwood where it is sorted for recycling in a state of the art manufacturing recycling facility (MRF).

William Tracey Group Managing Director, Michael Tracey said:
"The Scottish Government's Zero Waste Plan isn't simply about reducing landfill; it also puts a massive emphasis on recovering valuable resources from materials which, until now, have been treated as waste. The resource recovery plan which Steve has put in place is a perfect fit to the national strategy as it increases recycling, uses waste food to produce renewable energy, and will offer full diversion of waste from landfill. It moves Zero Waste from plan to reality."

McDonald's has introduced a number of innovative environmental programmes and initiatives in recent years across its UK restaurants and Steve is keen to build on these initiatives. He said: "As a business, we have established systems in place to minimise waste and our immediate priority is to prevent waste and recycle wherever possible. However I wanted to work with local partners to see if we could find cost-effective solutions for some of our waste streams such as food waste, where recycling is not possible."

Following the successful pilot at the Greenock restaurant, Steve is hoping to roll it out across his other restaurants in Dumbarton, Balloch and Clydebank and other franchisees in Scotland are also looking to implement these solutions.

Steve added: "Not only does waste have a potential impact on the environment, it also has a cost impact on the business. With our trucks being powered by bio-diesel made from our used cooking oil and these new solutions developed with the William Tracey Group, we are increasingly looking at waste as a potential resource rather than a cost".

Michael Tracey finished by saying: "We know that our customers are increasingly under pressure to reduce their impact on the environment and that finding a supplier who will work with them to reach their goals is vitally important. As a business we are investing in technologies which can turn difficult waste streams into renewable energy or recycled products and we are also working towards a Carbon Management Plan with the Carbon Trust to demonstrate our commitment to reducing our impact on the environment. We look forward to working with Steve further to roll out his success at the Greenock franchise across his other franchises."