Kraft and McDonald's in the News, For Different Reasons

Both Kraft and McDonald's have been busy recently with business moves. Tuesday Crain's reported that Kraft placed a $7.2 billion bid for French snack food giant Danone. Danone, makers of Dannon and Stonyfield yogurts, and Evian bottled water, is the world volume leader in bottled water, fresh dairy, and biscuit (cookies) and cereal products. If the deal goes through, it would give Kraft a foot in the door of emerging snack food markets in Russia and China.

Meanwhile, McDonald's is in the beginning stages of converting its fleet of delivery vehicles in Great Britain to run on biodiesel made from used cooking oil. The move, when completed, is the equivalent of removing 2,400 cars from the road, saving 1,700 tons of carbon annually. It's a great idea that one would think should be used in the States. Unfortunately, the EPA has certified neither a conversion kit for used cooking oil nor a pure vegetable oil as a registered fuel. There are isolated instances of used vegetable oil used to fuel cars in the States, including Oak Park resident Jim Gill, who gets his used cooking oil from an ice-cream parlor near his house and a Japanese restaurant in Forest Park. The one drawback, according to Gill in the article we linked to, is that his Jetta smells like French fries.

Image courtesy of 3story.org.