Hot on the heels of McDonald’s announcing it will install an electric vehicle charging station at one of its North Carolina restaurants (for more see our article ‘McDonald’s embraces electric cars‘), Burger King has jumped on the fast food green car bandwagon.
One New Jersey restaurant will be installing kinetic energy harvesters in its drive-through lane to convert energy from slowing cars into electricity.
The harvesters have been criticised because the resistance they create can hurt petrol mileage. However, New Energy Technologies Inc, which has created the prototype harvesters for Burger King, plans to get around this issue by installing its generators in places where vehicles naturally slow down – such as on the approaches to toll booths, high-traffic intersections and neighbourhoods with low-speed zones.
According to Andrew Paterno, the co-owner of several NYC metro-area Burger Kings, more than 150,000 cars drive through the company’s Hillside store each year. He sees the harvesters as a great way of capturing the wasted kinetic energy.
Of course the harvesters will struggle to make a dent into the company’s carbon footprint which starts with raising livestock and continues via transporting the food products, preparing the burgers and with the emissions of cars idling in the drive-through lane.
