Following a successful launch of a sustainable design approach in McDonald’s restaurants in Carbonne and La Guerche de Bretagne, France, WeWantMore reveals the design details for McDonald’s in Bourse, Brussels. As McDonald’s works to meet its 2050 net zero target, the team commissioned WeWantMore once again to create a sustainable design for its dining areas, focused on decor circularity.
A historic McDonald’s for Belgium, as it was the first of the chain to launch, every aspect of the restaurant, from circular furniture to energy-efficient lighting, is carefully designed to minimise environmental impact while providing a superior dining experience.
McDonald’s commitment to sustainability includes:
- Using over 80% wood from PEFC-certified sources and eliminating hard-to-recycle materials
- The plastic used, especially for the tables, is largely made from recycled materials
- Additionally, the lighting is energy-efficient, and the flooring and ceiling are Cradle-to-Cradle certified, allowing for easy recycling or reuse after their lifecycle
The restaurant further incorporates innovative decorative elements like real cork on the walls, partition walls made from recycled coffee grounds, and cardboard sunshades. This sustainable development approach will gradually be applied to other decors.
Ruud Belmans, WeWantMore founder and creative director, comments: “With this concept, we want to show that sustainable design can be bold and fun while making a significant difference. The main progress was made by choosing the right materials and designing the furniture and interior elements from scratch, simplifying as much as possible.”
Stephen Douglas, vice president, global restaurant design at McDonald’s, says: “Our new McDonald’s restaurant design bridges creativity and sustainability through a focus on décor circularity, elevating the way design meets the needs of our customers and employees. Not only does the new décor have a bright, optimistic look, but the circularity principles provide a sunny outlook to the future of how we will be feeding and fostering community.”
WeWantMore is an Antwerp-based, award-winning design studio that works across Europe and beyond. Its strong design thinking uses authentic storytelling across two disciplines at the highest level: its branding and interior design practices create inspiring projects that challenge the status quo.
WeWantMore worked closely with McDonald’s to create a dining area experience that would exist not just as a one-off restaurant, but one that could be scaled to other McDonald’s outlets around the world. This was developed by a measurement index together with the sustainability consultancy Anthesis, which tracks the circularity of the company’s global restaurant décor. The sustainable design of the restaurants significantly improves McDonald’s scores on the indicator with a focus on simplicity and disassembly.
WeWantMore strived to simplify the material palette towards the use of monomaterials and the décor built for this restaurant model can easily be taken apart. Pieces are held together using mechanical fixings, instead of glue, so local teams can more effectively break restaurant features down by raw material type, with the goal of recycling or reusing. This process is more sustainable than the alternative because metals or woods treated with certain laminates or glues are not designed for re-use.
A considered agenda drives every commission for the design and branding agency. As innovators in the industry, the studio has developed a sustainability-based classification system for its material sample library. The goal? To make it easier for interior designers and architects to select sustainable materials and partners in their projects. WeWantMore is missioned to inspire others to innovate and set the bar for future partnerships.
