Reducing the construction industry’s carbon footprint. Glanville plays a key role in helping McDonald’s
launch their first net zero emissions standard restaurant in the UK.
In December 2021, McDonald’s opened their first net zero emissions standard restaurant in Market Drayton, Shropshire. Glanville provided instrumental civil and structural engineering design services to help McDonald’s achieve their net zero emissions goal.
For more than 20 years, Glanville has worked as one of McDonald’s lead civil and structures engineers, providing expert design solutions. As a company fully committed to sustainability, we embraced the new initiative to create a fully sustainable restaurant when McDonald’s first approached us about their idea, which is all part of their ‘Clear Plan for Change’. The plan sets our McDonald’s mission to achieve net-zero emissions across their entire 1,400 restaurants in the UK and Ireland, by 2040. The new restaurant in Market Drayton is the first of many planned and is the flagship development paving the way for future sustainable developments.
Glanville provided civil and structural engineering design services that incorporated the use of recycled and recyclable materials, sustainable supplier methods and innovative approaches in order to meet the challenging net zero emissions target. The key design changes to achieve net zero emissions, included:
- Recycled kerb stones were created from around 200,000 recycled plastic bottles in place of standard PCC kerbs. This alone reduces CO2 emissions by over 25kg per kerbstone compared to standard concrete kerbs.
- All electricity is 100% renewable from the installed wind turbine and solar sources.
- Use of blast furnace concrete, an environmentally friendly alternative to concrete.
- Resin-bound porous surface drive-thru lane, instead of a concrete slab. This surface allows water to pass through into the ground beneath.
- Use of plastic material to most of the below-ground drainage.
- Using local suppliers and materials where possible, reducing CO2 emissions and transport costs.
In a recent interview with the BBC, McDonald’s spokeswoman Beth Hart said: “We’ve already started to roll out some of these innovations to other restaurants, but what is exciting about Market Drayton is the fact it will act as a blueprint for our future new builds.
We believe that our food needs to be served in restaurants that are sustainable for the future. Market Drayton is a big step towards making that a reality.”
Glanville has been a long-term partner to McDonald’s development programme for more than two decades and has delivered projects in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. We’ve maintained their trust, working on some of their most complex sites and, as with all clients, we strive to provide a service that doesn’t just deliver on but exceeds their expectations. In addition to civil and structural engineering services, Glanville regularly provides Geomatics services to McDonald’s, including geospatial (topo survey/subscan) and geotechnical input, as well as taking responsibility of lead coordinator, on behalf of McDonald’s project manager.
Source: Wind-powered net zero McDonald’s opens in Market Drayton – BBC News
