McDonald's is using grease from its food to power its delivery trucks

The oil used to make fries and burgers at McDonald's will soon be powering cars. In the middle-east, anyway. Earlier this week, the fast food giant announced a venture with Dubai-based company Neutral Fuels to convert its frying oil into biodiesel.

Neutral Fuels will collect over 22,000 liters of vegetable oil from McDonald's 80 United Arab Emirates stores, treat it, and covert it into biodiesel that will be used in the chain's entire delivery truck fleet in the area.

McDonald's said the biodiesel initiative was part of their larger plans in the UAE, which is trying to establish itself as a leader in renewable energy, even though the country is rich with oil.

Neutral has the capacity to produce up to 1 million liters (264,172 gallons) of biodiesel a year in its Dubai facility currently.

McDonald's has previously run its vehicles in England and Austria on biodiesel, but this is the first time any company has tried to do it in the Middle East.

"This one in particular is exciting because I don't think anyone has really tried that hard to sell this sort of fuel back to the Arabian Peninsula," Karl Feilder, chairman of the Neutral Group, told the AP. "It's the first time we are doing it with a fuel that burns 50 percent cleaner than normal diesel and has a lower carbon footprint because it's coming from a waste vegetable product."

Via AP

This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com