According to Forbes, this initiative is in order to promote McDonald’s environmental credentials in Europe. The world’s largest fast food chain is removing plastic straws in its branches, and it has created swimwear in its iconic red and yellow striped design from its plastic straws.
Particularly impressive about this swimwear was that it was handmade in Europe by usign recycled marine plastics and disposed McDonald’s straws. In McDonald’s Austria, this news come just in time for bathins season, where they presented a limited upcycled swimwear collection in the video below.
The company has generally been criticized by the media for promoting throwaway culture and for relying heavily on single use plastics.
In 2018, McDonald’s swtiched from plastic to paper straws in Ireland and the United Kingdom, however, this switch seems to be less efficeint than the previous plastic straws since they appeared less recyclable.
A year later, in June of 2019, the company did a trial for “narly plastic packaging-free restaurant” in Berlin for a 10-day period. The corporation was looking for new and innovative ways to reduce their use of packaging, in an effort to switch to more sustainable materials and help their customers reuse and recycle as well.
In November of 2019, it removed all straws in France (introducing the recyclable lids with flaps) in all of the restaurants around the country (which totals to 1,470 restaurants).
By the end of the year, its goal is to replace its McFlurry plastic lids with 100 percent recyclable packaging in all of its European restaurants. It has a subsequent goal that by the year 2015, all of its guest packaging will be derived from “renewable, recycled or certified sources” in all of its branches ( 37,000 locations in 120 countries) around the globe.
Their interim target is for 100 percent of their primary fiber-based guest packaging to come from recycled or certified sources where no deforestation occurs by this year (2020).
