The woman greening the golden arches
Can you use your MBA to save the planet? Just ask the chief sustainability officer at McDonald’s, Jenny McColloch. McColloch has one of the most influential sustainability jobs in the business world: leading the effort to green McDonald’s 40,000 restaurants. It’s a tough challenge that could transform all parts of the global company, from sourcing beef and chicken to new product development to water and power use. But it’s also rewarding: With restaurants in more than 100 countries, the opportunity to move the needle on climate change is enormous. For this special episode, we super-sized our team. For our interview with McColloch, Yesh joined forces with Mike Toffel, host of Climate Rising, a podcast about the impact of climate change on business from Harvard Business School.
Degrees: Real talk about planet-saving careers · Yesh Pavlik Slenk, Jenny McColloch, Mike Toffel
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Show Notes
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Terms we discuss in this episode:
Scope: How companies categorize their emissions.
- Scope 1 emissions are direct emissions from owned or controlled sources, sometimes called “operational emissions.” This includes reducing emissions from facilities or vehicles owned by an organization.
- Scope 2 emissions are indirect emissions from electricity, heating, cooling, or steam purchased by an organization. (For additional guidance on Scopes 1 and 2, see the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’ website.)
- Scope 3 emissions are all indirect emissions (that aren’t included in Scope 2) in an organization’s value chain. These are sometimes called “supply chain emissions.” Scope 3 emissions include both upstream emissions (from production processes) and downstream emissions (consumer use of a certain product).
With Jenny, we talk a lot about Scope 3 — in McDonald’s case, the emissions from its supply chain and franchisees. Since franchisees make up 95% of McDonald’s restaurants, scope 3 emissions are significant.
Science-Based Targets (SBTs)
SBTs provide a clearly-defined pathway for companies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help prevent the worst impacts of climate change. McDonald’s uses SBTs.
Absolute and Intensity Targets
These are two ways to measure emissions reductions.
- Intensity Target: Emissions relative to some other factor, such as the number of employees or revenue. Intensity targets account for economic growth. For example, McDonald’s could reduce the emissions per chicken nugget, while continuing to sell more happy meals each year.
- Absolute Target: An attempt to reduce all emissions, regardless of other factors. For example, an absolute target at McDonald’s would be saying that no matter how many chicken nuggets they sell, McDonald’s will reduce the amount of total emissions associated with chicken nuggets.
Resources:
- Environmental Defense Fund Climate Corps program, where Jenny McColloch was a fellow
- McDonald’s 2021 Risk & Resiliency report
- McDonald’s Climate Strategy
- McDonald’s Net Zero by 2050 Announcement
- Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef
- U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef
Yesh Pavlik Slenk is Degrees’ host. Amy Morse is our producer. Podcast Allies is our production company. Tressa Versteeg is senior producer; Rye Taylor is our audio engineer; Elaine Grant is CEO of Podcast Allies and Tina Bassir is project manager. Our music is Shame, Shame, Shame from Yesh’s favorite band, Lake Street Dive. Degrees: Real talk about planet-saving careers is presented by Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).
For this special episode, we super-sized our team. For our interview with Jenny McColloch, Yesh joined forces with Mike Toffel, host of Climate Rising, a podcast about the impact of climate change on business from Harvard Business School.
Follow Yesh on Twitter at @yeshsays, and stay up to date with us on Instagram @environmental_defense_fund.
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