McDonald’s is making a global effort for their stores to be environmentally friendly. One of the ways they hope to accomplish this is by changing their straws from plastic to paper. While they do have recycling in stores for people to throw their plastic straws in, many don’t always recycle meaning they still end up in the wrong place and continue to harm our environment. The new straws will be made with biodegradable paper, and will be wrapped in recycled paper as well. This way it doesn’t matter whether you recycle the straws or not, they will degrade over time and cause less harm to our environment than the plastic straws do.
They are doing a trial run of these new straws starting in the month of May, in 1,300 locations in U.K. Instead of immediately getting a straw with your drink or being able to grab one for yourself, they will be held behind the counter and customers will have to ask employees for one.
According to The Chicago Tribune, McDonald’s made the announcement that they hope to recycle guest packaging in all of its restaurants globally by 2025. On the McDonald’s website, they post their intentions of having all their “guest packaging come from renewable, recycled, or certified sources” by 2025. Their next goal is to make recyclable cup lids for both hot and cold drinks.
Many customers seem pretty pleased and impressed with the strives McDonald’s is making. Some even want McDonald’s to just skip the trial and make it a permanent feature in all their restaurants worldwide. Things are always changing and people will eventually get use to it. And when you’re trying to make change for the better of the world, how can people actually be mad about it?
I’m all for this change and you should be too. If we don’t change the multitude of ways we’re harming the Earth we will eventually find ourselves without a planet to live on.