McDonald’s Zero-carbon Restaurant Full of “High Tech and Hard Work”

      On September 20, McDonald’s China opened a McDonald’s drive-through restaurant in Beijing’s Shougang Park, its first LEED-certified zero-carbon restaurant in China.

McDonald’s Shougang Park restaurant was designed and built according to the zero-carbon emissions and zero-energy consumption standards of LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design Building).

     McDonald’s zero-carbon restaurant, located by the Qunming Lake in Shougang Park, uses the “Light Speed Future (Ray)” design style of McDonald’s flagship restaurant, with the “sunshine yellow” rotating staircase as the visual center, fully showing the energy and vitality. Wall space and ceilings are simple and generous, to create a fashionable dining environment through natural lighting with energy-saving lamps. When customers are overlooking from the outdoor dining area on the second floor of the restaurant, Shougang garden landmarks like the Qunming Lake nearby and Big Air Shougang in the distance form a delightful contrast, with a panoramic view of the green ecology and beautiful scenery of the lake.

      McDonald’s zero-carbon restaurant is an important milestone in greenization development, aiming to enable consumers to feel that they can support green and low-carbon activities in many ways in their daily life by their own experiences. This restaurant shows McDonald’s “green development engine” in all aspects, from green restaurants, green supply chains, green package to green recycling, to provide customers with a full range of green experience.

     One highlight of the zero-carbon restaurant is its self-sufficient clean energy system, which not only meets the LEED certification standard of “Green Restaurant”, but also achieves zero-energy consumption and zero-carbon. It is reported that the solar photovoltaic power generation system with the area more than 2,000 square meters is laid on the roof of the McDonald’s Shougang Park restaurant, generating about 330,000 degrees of electricity annually and reducing carbon emissions by about 200 tons per year. Through the solar photovoltaic power generation system, the restaurant can achieve the carbon emission operation balance, and provide the community with the surplus power.

      In McDonald’s Shougang Park restaurant, customers can also personally participate in energy conservation and emission reduction activities, such as stepping on environmental protection charging parent-child bikes, to drive green power generation to wirelessly charge mobile phones and light up McDonald’s giant “M”-shaped LOGO.

     At the same time, the full set of energy saving and consumption reduction system in the McDonald’s green restaurant can save 35% to 40% power for the whole building through the energy saving and consumption reduction system of the Internet of Things energy consumption management system, frequency conversion smoke exhaust system, air conditioning system, fresh air ventilation equipment and LED lighting system. The restaurant also uses decoration materials certified by the international authoritative standard GREENGUARD environmental protection, and strictly controls the chemical volatilization of materials in the indoor air.

     Green recycling is also a highlight of the zero-carbon restaurant. As the core of green recycling, “Reinventing the Good” project of McDonald’s China aims to redesign the waste plastic products of restaurants, supply chains and the industry and then transform them into those needed by the restaurants and consumers. For example, in the McDonald’s Shougang Park restaurant, the dining chairs are made of ocean plastics recycled, and the “Little Naive Elephant” device displayed in the restaurant is also made of Happy Meal toys recycled.

     Like other restaurants of McDonald’s China, McDonald’s Shougang Park restaurant offers green packaging products such as 100% sustainable Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified raw paper packaging bags, straw-free beverage cups and biodegradable plastic beverage bags.

For nearly a decade, McDonald’s China has been focusing on building and operating greener restaurants. Since 2013, McDonald’s China has been exploring the green and energy-saving methods of restaurants. In 2018, McDonald’s China introduced the international authoritative LEED certification of green building, focusing on the six core sectors, providing a comprehensive quantitative standard framework for the design, construction and operation of green restaurants.

     It is understood that McDonald’s China has the largest number of LEED certified green building projects in the world. As of September 2022, nearly 1,600 McDonald’s restaurants have received LEED certification, reducing carbon emissions by about 60,000 tons per year. By the fourth quarter of 2022, McDonald’s China is expected to complete the first phase target of constructing 1,800 LEED certified green restaurants ahead of schedule.

     In recent years, many catering brands have been actively promoting low carbon measures, not only reflected in encouraging consumers to bring tableware and to “Clear Plates”, but also reflected in the enterprise and in the whole industry chain to practice low carbon concepts, including reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions, using green packaging, green supply chains, to realize energy saving and carbon reduction in every link from raw materials to consumption with biotechnology, environmental technology and other means. Greenization has become the development trend of the future catering industry.

     McDonald’s is making every effort to reduce carbon emissions to help protect the earth’s environment and climate, which meets the “ecological contribution” standard under the primary indicator of “social responsibility” in the “China Brand Value Evaluation Standard”. This will actively enhance its ranking in the “Daguan·the World Brand Value Top 900”. McDonald’s brand value was 92.035 billion yuan RMB, ranking 283rd in “Daguan·the 2nd World Brand Value Top 900” officially released on July 30, 2022.

作者：肴筱临