How McDonald's burgers went 'green'

Their ads say their customers are loving it - but what no one much likes is the amount of rubbish McDonald's and other big businesses generate every day.

So the golden arches are trying to take on a greener tint. A pilot project in Sheffield will see 11 McDonald's restaurants turn their waste into heat and electricity for local buildings.

It works something like this: take a McDonald's burger - chuck it away - take that and the 100 tonnes of rubbish each restaurant generates a year, instead of taking it to a landfill drive it down the road to an energy recovery plant, mix it up with some of Sheffield's other rubbish , burn it in an incinerator - and get electricity and heat.

Critics argue that the amount of energy recovered this way is paltry compared to the amount of waste each restaurant generates.

McDonald's has says it has tried to minimise packaging and improve recycling - its delivery vehicles will soon be powered with used cooking oil and it hopes it can lead the way on dealing with waste

But there are only around twenty of these energy recovery plants across the country,- and unless more are built - that's going to mean long drives for the waste - reversing any green benefits.

And green campaigners say no matter how hard McDonald's tries to be environmentally friendly - the fact its core product is beef means it will always struggle.

The Vegetarian Society has launched a campaign warning people about what it calls the dangerous emissions from cattle, more deadly it says than the effect on climate change of the transport system across the world.

But this link between diet and global warming may be more difficult for the Big Mac generation to stomach.

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