Earlier this week, it was announced that fast food titan McDonald’s was initiating a bit of a branding change to their stores in Germany. In an effort to ‘green’ their image, nearly 100 burger locations throughout the country will replace the red backdrop behind the yellow arches with a new hunter green backdrop, following in the footsteps of a handful of stores in Great Britain and France who have already made the change.
“This is not only a German initiative but a Europe-wide initiative,” Martin Nowicki, McDonald’s Germany spokesman, told The Associated Press.
“With this new appearance we want to clarify our responsibility for the preservation of natural resources. In the future we will put an even larger focus on that,” Hoger Beek, vice chairman of McDonald’s Germany, said in the statement.
Despite the burger mecca’s good intentions, some environmental activists are unamused by the move, noting that while McDonald’s has made a few smaller earth-friendly changes, the company’s questionable food chain requires a more sustainable effort.
At least some environmental activists weren’t swayed by the new color scheme. Clare Oxborrow, a food campaigner with U.K.-based activist group Friends of the Earth, said McDonald’s “relies on factory-farmed animals that have been fed on imported animal feed that’s been grown on deforested land.”
~Jennifer Heigl