Fast-food chain KFC's famous chicken recipe remains a secret — but the brand now has a new "recipe" for its locations that aims to reduce its restaurants' planet-overheating air pollution by 46%, Green Biz reported.
KFC's new Building Green initiative laid out 11 "simple but meaningful" and mandatory measures that it will require its franchises to adhere to. These include: HVAC Fundamentals, Optimizing Exhaust Hoods, Holding & Cooking Efficiency, Refrigeration Efficiency, CFC & HCFC Free Refrigeration, Energy Efficient Interior Lighting, Energy Efficient Exterior Lighting, Building Water Use Reduction, Process Water Use Reduction, Restaurant Commissioning, and a No Smoking Policy.
Taken together, KFC expects these guidelines to amount to a nearly 50% reduction in carbon pollution across all of its restaurants — and that's a lot of restaurants. The brand recently announced that it had surpassed 30,000 locations worldwide and said that a new KFC restaurant opens on average every 3.5 hours (which comes out to just under seven new KFCs every day).
Fast-food chains are famously some of society's most egregious polluters — especially when it comes to single-use plastics, but also in planet-overheating carbon emissions — so there has been increasing public pressure on them to take responsibility. When they do, it's healthier for people and the environment.
Brands have responded in various ways. A couple of Burger King restaurants in Europe have been testing out fully recyclable cups. Taco Bell (owned by the same parent company as KFC) has been trying out a recycling program that encourages customers to mail in used sauce packets in exchange for rewards points.
There have also been instances of brands engaging in "greenwashing" — the practice in which companies attempt to curry favor with environmentally conscious consumers by simply pretending to take action. McDonald's, for example, has been accused of swapping out plastic straws for paper straws that were still not recyclable, while simultaneously switching from paper to plastic cups.
KFC's proposed changes, however, seem doable and could be applied to nearly any restaurant as a set of environmental best practices for fast-food chains.
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