In a UK first, refuse from McDonald's restaurants is to be used to heat local buildings.

The initiative will see 11 McDonald's restaurants in Sheffield, Rotherham and Barnsley participate in a pilot scheme, in which waste from the sites will be turned into electricity and heat for local buildings.

The restaurants will become the first of their kind in the UK to send no waste to landfill. Instead, it will be collected by McDonald's waste contractor, Veolia Environmental Services, who will then treat the waste at its state of the art Energy Recovery facility in Sheffield where it is then converted into electricity and heat.

Steve Easterbrook, President and Chief Executive Officer, McDonald's UK commented: "This is a great example of how businesses can work together to tackle big environmental challenges.

"At the moment, it is difficult for companies like McDonald's to recycle waste. Many recycling contractors refuse to take our waste because we cannot remove food from it completely. As a result, we have to send it to landfill. This trial is an exciting opportunity to look at an alternative method of disposal with real benefits for the environment and local community."

The scheme will save each restaurant from sending 100 tonnes of refuse to landfill each year and will help to provide heating for 130 local buildings such as Ponds Forge International Sports Centre, Park Hill flats, The Lyceum Theatre, Millennium Galleries, Weston Park Hospital and even Sheffield City Hall.

McDonald's plans to roll out the programme to further restaurants in the Sheffield area and hopes to extend it across the UK in the future.

Easterbrook continued: "As a progressive company, we are constantly trying to find ways to run our business in a more sustainable way. However, like many companies, we find that we are currently constrained by the lack of infrastructure needed to support initiatives like this across the UK. If the trial is successful we are keen to explore how we can extend it to other parts of the country as part of our ongoing efforts to improve our impact on the environment and local communities."

The 11 restaurants in the pilot will also trial a range of environmentally-friendly technologies and processes, including solar panels, wind power, energy efficient lighting and a recycling scheme for cardboard.

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