WHEN the anticapitalism protesters demonstrated in London last week, their fire was largely turned on Royal Bank of Scotland, with the Scottish institution bearing the brunt of the vandalism.

It may come as something of a relief to McDonald’s, the fast-food chain, that it is no longer the prime target of anarchists and antiglobalisation agitators.

The hamburger giant still arouses strong feelings among activists but it has been working hard to adapt, particularly in the environmental field. Introducing fair-trade coffee and organic milk, for example, have won some plaudits, but perhaps the most striking example can be seen in the south side of Chicago where, next door to the Swap-O-Rama flea market, it opened a prototype “green” restaurant last year.

As some of Britain’s big retailers, including J Sainsbury and Marks & Spencer, have opened pilot stores incorporating as many eco-friendly elements as possible, so McDonald’s has created a showpiece restaurant that could form the template for future sites. It is a big step forward from a site it opened in Sweden in 2000, which was the first to deliberately incorporate a number of green elements.

“We consider the Chicago restaurant to be our green learning laboratory,” said Max Carmona, McDonald’s senior director of restaurant design. While there are no plans to introduce a similar store in Britain, he said that green restaurants were in the works in Brazil, Canada and France.

The new site is designed to save energy. Some ideas are familiar, such as a system to capture rainwater. Others are more novel – the table tops have been made from recycled milk containers, for example, while one of the partitions is built out of Coca-Cola bottles.

Some features are sheer common sense – use of skylights to allow in more natural light – or so obvious they should not even need to be mentioned: the restaurant’s cardboard waste is sent for recycling, for example.

A few elements appear to be plain ridiculous. A sign planted in the side of the car park advises that certain bays are reserved solely for drivers of hybrid vehicles.

One byproduct of the energy reductions – the store is estimated to use 25% less energy than a regular McDonald’s restaurant – will be that utility bills are likely to fall. The group is evaluating the performance of its prototype to see what aspects can be replicated elsewhere. The potential savings could be huge, given that the company has 14,000 restaurants in America and 31,000 in total worldwide.

Whatever McDonald’s does on the environmental front is never going to be enough to placate some critics, but the Chicago prototype demonstrates that the company is thinking harder about the issues. However, until many of the features of the Chicago site are incorporated into a significant number of its restaurants, the green pilot will look like a curio within the portfolio.

McDonald’s UK arm has been experimenting with ideas to make its restaurants here a little greener. In Sheffield, the fast-food chain has been converting waste into energy. Twelve restaurants in Dorset took part last autumn in a trial to convert waste into compost for local farms. The company is expected to provide an update on the scheme soon.

Meanwhile, the anticapitalism protesters may have found fresh targets, but McDonald’s does not expect its new venture to win over its harshest critics. “Our expectation is not that [the store] will change customer preferences, but that it may enhance loyalty,” said Carmona.

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