McDonald’s: Learning to be Stewards?
Mar 25th, 2012 by raissac
I’ve been working for McDonald’s as a part time employee for almost two years and as much as I enjoy working in a fast-paced environment, it bothers me that McDonald’s day to day operations are not close to sustainable at all. I constantly see food wasted and any supplies we used to serve our customers (may it be cups, straws, ketchup packs, etc.) all go to waste for the smallest reasons. To be honest, they can still be used again for other customers, but I guess McDonald’s follows a strong food safety policy and offering their customers the best customer service is also key.
During one of my working shifts, I remember asking my manager if we had recycling bins and she simply told me that we didn’t have any because McDonald’s DOESN’T CARE and isn’t “green” at all. This struck me because I expected this massive fast food chain to be involved in any form of corporate social responsibility. I guess I was wrong to think that and it me sound ridiculous to my manager. I was disappointed with McDonald’s that preserving our environment wasn’t in their top priorities, especially with the fact that one of their biggest target markets is children. It may appear that they are such a fun-loving company, but they try to hide the fact that they are quite harmful to the environment.
However, to my surprise, when I came into work, I suddenly see a number of different trash bins inside our workplace. McDonald’s finally learned how to segregate, reduce, and recycle their trash. It made me happy to see that McDonald’s is slowly working its ways towards being a steward to our environment and practicing good product considerations for sustainability. Recently, I also read an online article that talks about McDonald’s piloting the replacement of their polystyrene foam cups (used for coffee/tea). They plan to replace these cups with double-walled fiber cups instead.
Polystyrene is not widely recycled and has become harmful to the marine environment. Polystyrene breaks down into small indigestible pellets, which animals perceive as food, resulting in the death of birds and marine mammals. The production of styrene, used in the production of polystyrene, also carries occupational safety risks. Several epidemiologic studies suggest an association between occupational styrene exposure and an increased risk of leukemia and lymphoma.
With the harmful effects of polystyrene mentioned, I do hope that McDonald’s will push to changing their foam cups in all of their stores. According to the article, they have only implemented the change to about 15% of their US stores. McDonald’s is now a global company and has hundreds of franchises in many countries. This would be very costly to McDonald’s and it will definitely be a challenge, but I do hope that they consider the long term effects of this change in their foam cups. The benefits would probably outweigh the costs in many aspects. Again, I salute McDonald’s for starting to be more sustainable in their business operations, but I hope they push forward even more with this movement of becoming a greener company.
This is exciting as I’ve worked at McDonalds before too. Since there wasn’t any sustainability/recycling policies from the top (management), the people working in the restaurants didn’t care at all. Hopefully, with McDonalds going green, other fast food giants like Burger King and A&W will follow suite.
I never thought about McDonald’s sustainability and how it pertains to children before. But definitely, if McDonalds can help educate kids about sustainability. Then the next generation will be very environmentally conscious…and overweight. Oh well, you gotta give up something.
[…] Here is my comment on Raissa’s blog post […]
Hey Raissa,
I think that McDonalds is definitely taking the right steps by implementing recycling in it’s operations as well as planning on changing polystyrene cups to fiber cups. However I just can’t help but get the feeling that they really don’t care about what they are doing to the environment and are reacting based on a market trend and not the greater good. I think as the market leader in the fast food industry they are definitely making the right choices by attempting to go green, however as we know from examining the entire product life cycle, I am sure that the prices are being held artificially low from harmful and unsustainable practices. I think that it would be in McDonald’s best interest to not disclose that they are going green until they have a full action plan that measures there entire supply chain and production. Although most of the consumers McDonald’s targets may not care about sustainability, the bad press the company can receive for Greenwashing is not needed.