Waste? Sort, recycle, or just eliminate!

By 2025, McDonald's wants all packaging materials in our restaurants to come from renewable, recycled, or certified sources. Our having reached 96% of that objective today proves we're taking things seriously. We deal drastically with the other garbage, too.

Neat—less plastic!

Plastic used to be the obvious choice, but today we know better. That's why, at McDonald's, we look for the best ways of removing plastic from our packaging and replacing it with sustainable solutions. An added bonus: it makes our packaging easier to recycle.

Some plastic-free examples:

• Paper straws in all Belgian restaurants, which are only provided when you ask for them.
• Cardboard cups for McFlurry, Sundae, and Shake instead of plastic ones.
• Bye-bye, balloons. But don't worry, the little ones get paper masks instead.
• "Hello new wooden spoon!" That's right! McDonald's is replacing all its plastic cutlery with wooden cutlery.
• And so much more ...

Recycling: truckloads at a time.

At home, you put your recycling in different bin bags. For a restaurant chain, it's a tad more complicated. But we don't let that stop us. On the contrary! In 2009, McDonald's launched its own system for collecting and managing all kitchen waste: the Green Truck.

The Green Truck's trajectory:

The rubbish is separated into 7 different partial flows: cardboard and dry paper, plastics, kitchen waste, fried oils, waste from the customer areas, PET bottles, and hazardous waste.

• The Green Truck collects the waste and processes it in 6 separate partial flows. Twice a week, for every restaurant. Hazardous waste is processed separately.
• Useful fact: all packaging contains at least 90% recycled materials.
• Since 1999, 100% of all used fried oils at McDonald's Belgium have been recycled into biodiesel.
  • That means all used oil is given a new life.
  • Thanks to the unique composition of high oleic colza and sunflower oils, the trans fat content is no higher than 1%, and the saturated fat content is lower than 8%.
    Since 2019, a hybrid Green Truck has also been making the rounds.

Since 2019, a hybrid Green Truck has also been making the rounds.

Together, we can put a lid on litter.

Litter is a scourge for the neighbourhood and the environment. As good neighbours and members of the local community, we're launching an offensive against littering. Our plan of attack:

• regularly cleaning up litter around the restaurants (and not just our parking lot)
• raising customer awareness in and around our restaurants by way of extra rubbish bins, posters, etc.
• taking part in joint clean-up initiatives in cooperation with the cities and municipalities where we have outlets.