During the one-day national plastics summit on March 2 in Canberra, McDonald’s announced that they would be moving towards using wooden cutlery.
The summit was hosted by federal Environmental Minister Sussan Ley and brought together roughly 200 attendees from industry, government, and community sectors.
The aim of the summit was to convince the government to mandate that 100 percent of plastic packaging be compostable, reusable, or recyclable by 2025.
To this end, McDonald’s promised to ditch plastic cutlery and replace them with wooden utensils. They added that all 900-plus stores in Australia will have wooden alternatives soon. The fast-food chain aims to phase out all plastic cutlery by the end of the year.
“We’re committed to being an industry leader in sustainable practices, ultimately using our scale for good to positively impact challenges facing the communities we operate in,” Kylie Freeland, McDonald’s Australia supply chain and sustainability director, said in a statement.
“By removing plastic straws and cutlery from McDonald’s restaurants, we are continuing to reduce our environmental footprint and will be removing more than 860 tonnes of plastic from our system.”
Late last year, McDonald’s instituted a three-month trial over nine of its outlets across New Zealand to try out the wooden cutlery. The move to get rid of plastic cutlery follows the company’s pledge 18 months ago to ditch plastic straws by the end of this year.
In addition, the lids on its McFlurry cups, salad bowls, and sundae cups have been replaced with fiber-based alternatives.
McDonald’s was not alone in announcing plans to cut down on plastic usage.
Nestle has also announced its intention to collect bread bags and biscuit packets from more than 100,000 households.
“We know that soft plastics is an area that needs greater focus and collaboration,” Sandra Martinez, chief executive of Nestle Australia, said.
“We need to find ways to drive more recycling here.”
According to the Boomerang Alliance and the World Wide Fund Australia, 130,000 tons of plastic gets dumped into Australian oceans each year.
With a recycling rate of only nine percent, they said that the market has failed and that federal and state governments must intervene to pick up the slack.
“There are alternatives to plastic packaging, but they won’t be adopted unless governments take the lead,” WWF-Australia’s Katinka Day said in a statement.
More state and federal government actions are needed to cut down on waste and its costs to communities so that a more sustainable future is created, said Local Government NSW president Linda Scott.
“Councils and communities are passionate about doing their bit, but they’re at the end of the waste supply chain, and local government kerbside recycling programs are only a small part of the solution,” she said in a statement.
She added that banning single-use plastic bags should be acted on by the NSW state government and that the waste levy, amounting to nearly $800 million a year, should fund councils to save recycling.
The Australian Council of Recycling hailed the summit as a chance to act instead of being simply rhetoric.
“A summit that puts substance before stylistics is what we need to deal with the plastics problem,” the council’s CEO Peter Shmigel, who chaired one of the summit’s sessions, said.
He clarified that some plastics serve very useful purposes although there are those that definitely need to be banned, such as single-use imported items.
“Therefore, we need to get smarter with the plastic we do use, especially ensuring its recyclability and those plastic products are made with lower-emissions, domestically sourced recycled resin ASAP,” he said.
Replaced!