McDonalds is failing on many fronts for the environment and the animals. Each McDonalds meal contains so many small pieces of plastic. They contain on average around 2-5 per meal which inevitably end up in our oceans and in wildlife and animals stomachs. MacDonalds proudly claims that 82% of its waste is compostable, why not stretch that to 100%? If its plastic were made from compostable plant based plastic, all of their waste from their restaurants could be commercially composted, and customers could compost their waste in their curbside compost bin at home.
For 'compostable' cups to be acceptable in the green organics bins in Australia they need to be clearly identified as compostable i.e. on the cup and/or packaging, showing:
- Australian Certified AS4736 (for commercial composting) or AS5810 (for home composting)
- The Australian compostable 'Seedling logo' (as below)
McDonalds is a user of palm oil linked to derainforestation, according to its own website. McDonalds needs to make sure 100% of its palm oil is properly certified by the RSPO as responsible and not use smoke and mirrors to deflect from that. They should ideally not use palm oil at all and find an alternative. Macdonalds also are still contributing to deforestation by sourcing meat. paper and feed grown on land in the Amazon and forests around the world that have been cleared of rainforest to become farmland. They obviously need to stop sourcing anything linked to deforestation and derainforestation. They should source recycled paper.
Beef has a large impact on climate change. Mcdonalds should reduce the amount of beef contained in each burger and promote alternatives like the vege burger. Also their meat is often factory farmed and slaughtered. They need to establish standards for animal welfare and find alternatives to mass slaughter of animals.
