Hardcastle Restaurants, the master franchise for McDonald’s in West and South India, is powering its delivery trucks in Mumbai with biodiesel made from its own used cooking oil. The refrigeration equipment on the trucks is also powered by the biodiesel, making it the first company in the food industry to recycle cooking oil.

Biodiesel from used cooking oil is a cleaner fuel with 75 per cent lesser carbon emission than diesel over its entire life cycle. It is an ecofriendly fuel that helps limit global warming, says the company.

Vikram Ogale, Director National Supply Chain and Quality Assurance, McDonald’s India said, “the focus is on powering delivery trucks. As we scale up and become efficient, and as the model evolves, if there is any surplus biodiesel, we will evaluate further uses of this ecofriendly fuel.”

Piloting the project

Ogale told BusinessLine , “We keep looking for opportunities to reduce, re-use and recycle. Used cooking oil is generated from our restaurants regularly and on research we found that there is an opportunity to recycle it into biodiesel. This is the reason we started with a small pilot to evaluate the feasibility and then scaled up to a commercial scale.”

The last year’s pilot has successfully been scaled up to cover all 85 restaurants in Mumbai. At present, the company is converting more than 35,000 litres of used cooking oil every month into biodiesel, bringing on a saving of over 420,000 litres of crude oil annually. The company said in a statement that the process of conversion begins at the restaurant where the distribution centre collects the used cooking oil, which is then taken to the converting facility in tankers. The oil is then converted into biodiesel and sent back to the distribution centre. It is then used in dedicated refrigerated trucks for McDonald’s supply logistics in Mumbai.

Terming it just the beginning, Amit Jatia, Vice Chairman, Westlife Development said the company would continue to champion the cause of environment protection.

Over the next four years, Hardcastle Restaurants is looking at expanding its restaurant footprint to 450-500, essentially using about 15 lakh litres of used oil to make biodiesel for running its refrigerated delivery trucks. It brings about a reduction of over 4,000 MT of carbon emissions, equal to planting about 2 lakh trees, according to the company.

Speaking on the initiative, President of the Biodiesel Association of India, Sandeep Chaturvedi said Hardcastle Restaurants and Unicon Biofuels has been working for the past one year to convert used cooking oil into biodiesel as per the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS). He has urged all food companies to apply the same business model.

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