Hello TEDxPresidio, my name is Pär Larshans.

I'm Chief Sustainability Officer from Max Hamburger 
Restaurants, a fast food chain from Sweden.

In 2002, the two sons of the founders, 
Richard and Christopher,

became in charge of the company.

The first thing they did was
to travel in the US together with their father

and I think they had more than 800 burgers

during a period of four weeks.

Coming home from the US they, 
of course, saw not just the good taste

but also the long-term consequences 
of consuming fast food.

Therefore, in 2003 we launched our Delifresh menu,

that means that we are trying to serve burgers

based on low fat, low sugar, less salt 
and, of course, fibre-rich breads.

There are many things we do 
in our road to sustainability.

Another example is, of course, 
the way that we are hiring people with disabilities.

What we are doing is that we are trying to focus

not on the people with disabilities,

on the other hand, we focus on our managers

and try to take away the prejudices by teaching them

about the people with disabilities 
and how to train them.

The result of the cause today is that our programme

has been highlighted by the European Union

and, of course, here are also some pictures

where the present Minister of Employment 
meets some of the employees.

In late 2006, Mr Richard Bergfors was concerned,

he had seen Al Gore's movie "An Unconvenient truth"
more than sixteen times.

So, therefore, he came 
to the top management team with a question:

how is the situation in our company? 
What is our impact to the climate?

The result of this was depressing in some ways,

meaning that the beef, our prime product,

is more than 70% of our total emissions.

And with that result on hand, 
we decided to call to action.

(Slide: Putting the carbon on the menu)

(Slide: We offset everything we emit
by planting trees in Africa.)

Other reaction is, of course, our new 
environmental-friendly restaurants,

that are really focusing on 
reduced consumption of energy

but also the way how the whole restaurant 
is environmental deductible.

Running a fast food company just in Sweden,

even if we have the ambition of opening up 
new restaurants outside Sweden,

I'm still amazed over the big recognition 
that our programme has had.

Sir Paul McCartney: In Sweden now

they've started to label food

to show the costumers
the environmental damage rating,

so it's giving the people a choice.

You're told that, you know, this burger is going to

damage the atmosphere 
to the equivalent of this and, so,

at least the customers then 
can look at the goods and say

well, maybe I don't want to buy them.

So it gives them the chance 
to buy sensibly and responsibly.

Pär Larshans: And I can assure you, 
Max as a company will continue

to make efforts to reduce our emissions

and inspire others to do the same thing.