Last week, US-based automaker Ford and McDonald’s announced a partnership to create car parts from coffee waste. McDonald’s will supply coffee chaf – the bean husk that comes off during roasting – that Ford will mix with plastic and other additives to create various car parts, starting with headlight housings. The new composite material will be 20% lighter than traditional materials, which means better fuel efficiency, and will save up to 25% of the energy typically used during the molding of parts. McDonald’s and Ford say they will also explore other ways to use food waste as raw materials for cars.
An unlikely partnership in the name of sustainability? Go for it!
BRANDED BRANDS. We’ve seen McDonald’s form a few unexpected partnerships, from providing a hotline to the US embassy from all Austrian branches, to celebrating Chinese New Year with luxury fashion brand Anna Sui, to announcing drone deliveries with Uber Elevate. Underlying these initiatives is a core truth about consumers: they don’t silo their expectations in neat, B2C categories, but instead bring expectations and behaviours generated inside one category to the entire consumer arena. That’s why innovative, unexpected partnerships can be so powerful. So here’s a question for 2020: what unexpected partnership could see you reach out to new consumers and meet new sets of expectations?
ECO-CYCLE.Via Greta, Extinction Rebellion and more, awareness that we’re in a climate emergency has reached a critical mass. In the UK, over 25% consider the environment one of the three most important issues facing the UK – the highest level ever. Consumers are putting GREEN PRESSURE on brands to become more sustainable: and reducing waste is one great way to do just that. Whether that means making clothes out of plastic bottles in China or turning brewery waste into dishwashing liquid in Belgium, there are so many opportunities to use recycled raw materials in some capacity.So make a commitment to identify where you could cut waste in your process: it’s the right thing to do, and in a world of GREEN PRESSURE will win you kudos, too.
