McDonald’s is making a big change to its packaging as it goes fully recycled by 2025
FAST food chain McDonald's has promised to make all of its packaging worldwide recyclable by 2025.
Over the next seven years, the restaurant chain will work on making all bags, straws, wrappers and cups from recycled or renewable materials.
There are almost 37,000 McDonald's restaurants across 120 countries worldwide.
Currently only half of it's packaging is made from sustainable materials and only 10 per cent of them recycle it.
It is the latest retailer to announce sustainability plans following a warning from Theresa May that the 8.3billion tons of plastic produced since the 1950s will more than triple to 34billion tons by 2050 without urgent action.
This morning Iceland announced that it planned to ban plastic packaging within the next five years.
Francesca DeBiase, McDonald's chief sustainability officer, said it was customers' number one request "to use less packaging, sourced responsibly and designed to be taken care of after use".
But it did admit that some sites may find it difficult to recycle thanks to regulations and customer behaviour towards sustainability where the restaurant is located, but it plans to be "part of the solution".
McDonald's already aims for 100 per cent of it's paper and card packaging like cups and burger boxes will come from recycled or certified sources where no deforestation occurs by 2020.
A McDonald's spokesperson told the Sun Online: "We take our responsibility extremely seriously and in the UK we are committed to reducing our environmental impact and continue to challenge ourselves and our supplier partners to help evolve our thinking."
The moves come as consumers continue to slam retailers for using unnecessary single-use plastics in the wake of Sir David Attenborough's Blue Planet series.
Shoppers have been calling out again Lidl's "naked onions" wrapped in plastic, while M&S bowed to pressure and removed "cauliflower steaks" from shelves.
Latest on the environment
Coffee chain Starbucks is going to start charging some customers in London an extra 5p for their paper cup in order to encourage the use of reusable ones.
We reported how shoppers are paying up to 54 per cent MORE for loose fruit and veg than if they buy them wrapped in plastic packaging.
The price of fresh fruit and veg in leading supermarkets Asda, Lidl, Morrisons, Sainsbury's and Tesco we're found to be between 10 per cent and 54 per cent more expensive.
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