McDonald's makes its logo more 'green'

  

BERLIN, Germany -- McDonald's is going green -- swapping its traditional red backdrop for a deep hunter green -- to promote a more eco-friendly image in Europe.

About 100 German McDonald's restaurants will make the change by the end of 2009, the company said in a statement Monday. Some franchises in Great Britain and France have already started using the new color scheme behind their Golden Arches.

"This is not only a German initiative but a Europe-wide initiative," Martin Nowicki, McDonald's Germany spokesman, told The Associated Press.

The Oak Brook, Illinois-based burger behemoth has more than 32,000 restaurants in 118 countries and has long been targeted by activists as being environmentally unfriendly.

The company has warmed to "greener" practices, including environmentally friendly refrigeration and converting used oil into biodiesel fuel.

"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.

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."

McDonald's says it takes steps to ensure it does not source feed from recently deforested areas, but Oxborrow suggested that McDonald's business model was environmentally unsound.

She said in an e-mail that the meat and diary industry that fills the fast food giant's buns "produces more climate-changing emissions than all the world's transport."

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