Bridging creativity and sustainability
As McDonald's works to meet its 2050 net zero target, the global team collaborated with us to create a sustainable design for its dining areas.
Ruud, our creative director, stating the goal : 'With this concept we want to show that sustainable design can be bold and fun and make a huge difference at the same time.'
At the outset, McDonald's, created a measurement index together with the sustainability consultancy Anthesis, which tracks the circularity of all global restaurant décors.
The resulting design significantly improves the score on the indicator and the key to the whole thing is simplicity and disassembly: The décor built for this restaurant model can easily be taken apart. Pieces are held together using mechanical fixings, instead of glue, so local teams can more effectively break restaurant features down by raw material type, with the goal of recycling or reusing. This process is more sustainable than the alternative because metals or woods treated with certain laminates or glues are not designed for re-use.
A bright impact
“Our new McDonald’s restaurant design bridges creativity and sustainability through a focus on décor circularity, elevating the way design meets the needs of our customers and employees,” said Stephen Douglas, Vice President, Global Restaurant Design at McDonald’s. “Not only does the new décor have a bright, optimistic look, but the circularity principles provide a sunny outlook to the future of how we will be feeding and fostering community.”
Facts & Figures
Important highlights of the new pilot restaurants in France include:
-Over 80% of the wood used is PEFC certified, from the tree to the restaurant.
-Laminates, which are notoriously challenging to recycle, have been removed from all furniture and décor elements (except for generic service elements such as trash bins and the Happy Meal Merchandiser for the time being).
-Powder coating has also been removed from all furniture and décor elements to facilitate greater reuse of steel components in the future.
-100% of the plastic used in tabletops and low stools, and at least 80% of the plastic used in chairs, is recycled content.
-All the energy-efficient lighting utilizes reusable fittings with replaceable LED chips.
-The floor is 70% Cradle-to-Cradle certified and the ceiling 100% certified.
