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McDonald's Says Its Packaging Will Be 100 Percent Green By 2025

McDonald's Says Its Packaging Will Be 100 Percent Green By 2025

As it aims to further burnish its environmental credentials, McDonald’s says it will make its packaging 100 percent green by 2025.

The global fast-food giant on Tuesday announced plans to make all of its consumer packaging out of renewable, recyclable and certified materials within seven years. It also will add recycling bins to all of its stores.

“Our customers have told us that packaging waste is the top environmental issue they would like us to address,” Francesca DeBiase, McDonald’s sustainability officer, said in a statement. “Our ambition is to make changes our customers want and to use less packaging, sourced responsibly and designed to be taken care of after use.”

McDonald's has vowed to make all of its consumer packaging out of renewable, recyclable and certified materials by 2025.
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McDonald's has vowed to make all of its consumer packaging out of renewable, recyclable and certified materials by 2025.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, nearly 45 percent of U.S. landfills are made up of discarded food and its packaging or containers.

Today, only 10 percent of the company’s more than 36,000 restaurants offer recycling bins for customer use, while about half of its products’ packaging comes from renewable, recycled or certified materials, according to a press release.

The company’s preferred certification is by the Forest Stewardship Council, which sets environmental, economic and social standards for its sourced materials.

The plans to go green follow a number of previous environmentally-friendly steps made by the company, including a recent vow to eliminate foam packaging from its global supply chain by the end of 2018.

Other measures being taken include a 2020 goal, set in 2014, of serving only coffee from certified sustainable sources, as well as a 2020 goal of using only fiber-based packaging from certified or recycled sources.

Since joining forces with the Environmental Defense Fund in 1990, McDonald’s says it has eliminated more than 300 million pounds of packaging, recycled 1 million tons of corrugated boxes and reduced waste by 30 percent.

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.