MILAN (ITALPRESS) – The educational campaign of McDonald’s and Altroconsumo, the largest independent consumer organization in Italy, has started in recent days, which puts consumers at the center and aims to spread good recycling practices, starting from direct involvement of those who, in daily gestures and choices, can make a difference. McDonald’s, in fact, with its 680 restaurants, which serve over 1.2 million customers every day, can contribute to educating, raising awareness and speeding up the ecological transition process, starting from the diffusion of correct waste separation.
The “Circular Future” project, announced last July, started from an independent analysis conducted by Altroconsumo last summer, with the aim of investigating – in ten McDonald’s restaurants in different areas of Italy – the level of awareness on separate collection of packaging and identify areas for improvement. McDonald’s customers, employees and licensees were involved – together with over 2,000 McDonald’s customers reached thanks to the Altroconsumo “ACmakers” community – who, through their experience, laid the foundations for a communication campaign that lives in the restaurants throughout Italy but also on the app, social channels and website and in the media, with dedicated planning. Among the information materials available to consumers, video pills and a short practical guide.
“Thanks to this project we are acquiring greater awareness of how to best accompany our customers, directly involving them in the challenge of making 100% of our packaging recyclable and therefore promoting circularity – said Dario Baroni, CEO of McDonald’s Italia -. For us, this represents an important objective that is associated with a broader ecological transition path that we have undertaken for several years.”
“Consumers are the fundamental link in any circular economy strategy that intends to succeed. If we really want to generate positive impacts on the environment and society, all actors must collaborate: through this initiative, we aim to increase people’s awareness and responsibility around behaviors that are as simple as they are important, with which everyone can promote and put into practice the circularity”, commented Alberto Pirrone, Country Manager and general manager of Altroconsumo.
McDonald’s project with Altroconsumo adds to the broader ecological transition path undertaken by the company, which over the years has seen important investments and a concrete effort to achieve measurable results, starting from packaging. In fact, since 2019, McDonald’s has started a gradual elimination of single-use plastic in favor of paper, with an annual saving of over 1000 tons of plastic. Today, approximately 90% of McDonald’s packaging is made of paper, 100% recyclable, certified or recycled, thanks also to the partnership with Seda International Packaging Group. In fact, the product analyzes on waste carried out by Comieco highlight the full recyclability of the paper waste generated by McDonald’s. In particular, the good practices analyzed – characterized by effective communication supported by a specially designed separate collection system and in-room quality control – demonstrate that it is possible to achieve a separate paper collection rate of over 80%. Furthermore, from Comieco’s analyses, it appears that over 9 out of 10 cellulosic packaging used in McDonald’s restaurants are sent for recycling, with a low level of foreign fractions (net recycling rate of 93%). A remarkable result, considering that these are food packaging with very high quality fiber and predominantly single material.
– McDonald’s press office photo –
(ITALPRESS).
