ysabetwordsmith | McDonald's Goes Green

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McDonald's Goes Green

McDonald's has just announced a long-term plan for shifting entirely to recycled packaging on their products, and providing retrieval for used packaging, with an eye toward sustainability. :D I was not a fan of this franchise growing up, because the food was just inedible to me. But the quality of some items has improved -- I am now quite fond of the egg McMuffins and the buttermilk chicken tenders (evidently made with actual buttermilk in some form, the taste is distinct) -- and I'm a huge fan of their extended hours for "breakfast" items. This new announcement makes me even happier. They are deliberately leveraging their large size to deliver the top environmental improvement their customers requested, in hopes that it with influence other restaurants to do likewise.

If you like McDonald's food, go buy something, they deserve the folding votes for this. It's like a little slice of Terramagne; this is the kind of socially aware decision that their businesses make all the time. \o/

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Sadly, it won't translate into long-term sustainability; food packaging that gets food all over it needs to be compostable. Your basic pizza delivery box isn't recyclable atall after it's got grease, cheese, and possibly marinara all over it... but it's *perfectly* compostable. If Mickey Dees can do the same thing with its stuff - and I *know* they make compostable everything-a-fast-food-place-would-need (cold cups of cornstarch-based plastic, ditto the lids, forks, straws, etc.; uncoated or wax-coated instead of plastic- or foil-coated burger wrappers, ditto the little fry cartons, ketchup in the same plastic as the cold cups, along with lids for those, instead of those abominable plastifoil squeeze packs we've all been swearing at for .... pretty much as long as we've been alive), then they make one big bin, label it "compost", and boom you're done.

The other thing we gotta do - which will probably depend on having a sane government in the other Washington, dammit - is shift our primary paper pulp source. Weyrhauser (a big damn lobbying force) and Georgia Pacific (owned by the Koch brothers, need I say more) have a bazillion acres dedicated to growing softwoods for paper, the turnaround time on which is 10-20 years and the environmental damage cost of which is astronomical. Good, Honest Hemp? Regrows in a year and is a nitrogen fixer. And the kind you grow for fibre and oil has minimal THC content, so the crossover between the medicinal/recreational growth and the oil/fibre growth is limited to them as don't know no better. And AIUI the processing for hemp paper is less toxic... and frankly the paper quality is better. Modern copy paper what you get in Yon Big Box Store breaks down on the order of a few decades. Good Honest Hemp? Well, there's some good honest hemp paper on display in the other Washington that's (does math) 241 years old... (I wouldn't have used iron gall ink; that shit is corrosive... but hey, it's what they had, and it's definitely permanent...)

Chicken tenders, eh? Hmmm. I wish they hadn't got rid of whatever that burger was with actual vegetables on it but none of the frou-frou stuff... anyplace else - BK, Jack, Wendy's, whathaveyou you can get a burger with cheese, lettuce, tomato, and ketchup on it... maybe pickles/onions too... but Ron's has either the Quarter Pounder (*just* pickles/onions/ketchup, no lettuce/tomato) or some kind of "signature" burger which is more topping than burger... Bweh.

Hemp is a nitrogen fixer? The experimental station next door is having the worst time with keeping nitrogen in the ground with the small patch they're growing. It's stripping the nitrogen terribly.

Looks like it depends in the variety. I'm seeing both ways in Google.

Then my first thought is to interlace rows of n-fixing and n-stripping varieties. It's all hemp; it should have similar growing conditions and uses.

That's certainly a keep-it-simple-stupid approach!
:thumbsup:

The other obvious solution, if you have valuable strains with opposed nitrogen behavior and very different uses, would be to alternate them annually like people do with corn and soybeans. Any n-fixer will do though -- alfalfa and red clover are popular fodder crops, and you can get 2-3 mowings of alfalfa in a season.

.... that would be a good candidate for some of the genetic experiements like they do on peanuts at the University of Georgia or on potatoes at UIdaho... find/breed one that made good paper and/or good oil *and* was a nitrogen fixer...

Admittedly nice in concept, but I still wish McDonald's would pay their average worker more than poverty wages. One step forward in one arena does not a Chanter much less wary make... although not much does not equal not at all.

Have you ever watched a train try to stop or change direction? That corporation is an utter juggernaut, and doing a lot of awful things. They can't change all of that at once; they can't even change one thing quickly. But I've seen them make changes I like, which is rare, and I wish to encourage.

If you care a lot about wages, by all means write to them and encourage a raise. They seem to be listening to customers more now than they used to.

That might be due to a movement of "make stuff yourself" that is ever-so-slowly gaining momentum. Or, due to people NOT buying fast food because of lack of transport, or lack of funds, or both. Or.... you know, stuff. :)

(I follow a channel from Townsends that covers a lot of historical recipes and other things. It's gaining popularity now that they've figured out what people REALLY enjoy seeing.)

It's good to see Big Corporations do at least some attempt at being eco-friendly even if it's not perfect, because if nothing else, it'll help shift the attitudes. In Finland McDonalds actually has a vegan burger in their selection (vegetarian/vegan food and meat substitues have been a huge trend the last few years so their local competition already had vegan options).

That is an excellent idea also.

I seem to recollect reading in one of the science journals that McD's was funding research into vat-grown meat as well... which would be an obvious step for them I suppose.

I suspect that the Mega-Corps have realised that sustainability isn't about being fair or ethical... it's about surviving. They've got the idea that their prior practices are basically killing the planet they're standing on and, so far, we don't have a planet B. Plus, their customer base was going elsewhere, to companies that aren't actively rapacious. Them going green is a matter of enlightened self-interest, not altruism.

Which makes them practical super-villains at least... but no less evil.

I'll take enlightened self-interest over that barking baboon in the White House. Rational villains can be negotiated with. Lunatics cannot.

Agreed... apply enough logic and reason and even evil super-villains can end up being forces for good...

*heh*

Now there's a prompt for you! Someone using logic and rational arguments to talk an Evil Super-villain around to being one of the good guys, without him/her/it quite knowing what happened... sort of a Scheherazade gambit, only with rational logical arguments instead of stories.

Edited 2018-01-18 10:37 (UTC)

"Despicable Me!" :)

Well.. kinda... Gru came around because he fell for the girls, although I suspect Margo probably had a talk with him off camera about the cost/benefit analysis of being a good guy. Probably somewhere between the first and second films.

Why yes, I have watched it. :)

I have found with humans, that the emotional attachment to one's beliefs is definitely part of the cost/benefit equation.

Wow, that is good news about McDonald's. I was just thinking back to the days when most of their items were packaged in that thick styrofoam. I really enjoyed their egg white canadian bacon muffin for a while. I think they know they have to step up their game to compete, right?

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