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Hello TEDxPresidio, my name is Pär Larshans.

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

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

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became in charge of the company.

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

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and I think they had more than 800 burgers

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during a period of four weeks.

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

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

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Therefore, in 2003 we launched our Delifresh menu,

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that means that we are trying to serve burgers

NOTE Paragraph

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

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

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

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What we are doing is that we are trying to focus

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not on the people with disabilities,

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on the other hand, we focus on our managers

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and try to take away the prejudices by teaching them

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about the people with disabilities 
and how to train them.

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The result of the cause today is that our programme

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has been highlighted by the European Union

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and, of course, here are also some pictures

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

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In late 2006, Mr Richard Bergfors was concerned,

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

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

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

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The result of this was depressing in some ways,

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meaning that the beef, our prime product,

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is more than 70% of our total emissions.

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

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(Slide: Putting the carbon on the menu)

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

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

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that are really focusing on 
reduced consumption of energy

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

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Running a fast food company just in Sweden,

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

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


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Sir Paul McCartney: In Sweden now

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they've started to label food

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to show the costumers
the environmental damage rating,

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so it's giving the people a choice.

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

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

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

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

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


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

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to make efforts to reduce our emissions

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and inspire others to do the same thing.