Mcdonalds Environmental Responsibility

ENVIRONMENTAL RESPONSIBILITY

Over the years, McDonalds has developed a tight compromise with the protection of the environment. The company became aware of the enormous amounts of waste that itwas generating of which, approximately, 80% was produced “behind the counter”, meaning that it was associated with the preparation area and the supply chain of their products. The company did notrealize at first the impact that these practices were having altogether with the posterior effects caused by the disposal of the take-out packages given to consumers with their orders. No measures weretaken at the moment as McDonalds was aware of the implicit difficulty of driving their customers into recycling those packages inside the restaurant and deposit them in special containers for beingre-processed.

When the consequences derived from this waste accumulation started to become a problem for McDonalds, the company decided that it was time to team up with organizations specialized inenvironmental issues such as the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) in order to be able to reach a better environmental policy. McDonalds was then studied and scrutinized which was a difficult task toperform due to the large number of franchisees that exist. The thing about them is that they share common functioning standards but a decentralized decision making process which increases flexibility.Another important aspect about McDonalds is its condition as a service provider and thus its food, packaging and supply chains are independent from the core business.

McDonald’s actions regardingthe environment referred to packaging material reduction, reuse, recycling and composting. Packages are an important because they help to protect the product and to differentiate it from itscompetitors. Back in the 70’s, McDonalds main worry revolved around the cut down of trees in order to produce the packages for their products, however, the company would later turn to plastic (polystyrene)...