The Vadimus Post is behind schedule this holiday week because we are in Southeastern England in Lewes, near Brighton. A regular stop is the McDonalds in Newhaven the other evening. We ordered three Happy Meals, with drinks (two orange juices and a milk), an adult meal with the new Spicy Veggie deli sandwich, two mozzarella dippers, two ice cream McFlurries, a strawberry sundae, an orange Fanta, cappuccino and a glazed donut.

The Happy Meals each came in a fold-up cardboard box, the french fries were in paper and cardboard holders, the drinks in their own plastic containers with inner plastic seal. The tomato ketchup came in a plastic tub with a paper seal top, the Happy Meal toys were sticker books, each sealed in a plastic bag with two additional paper bags inside and 8 sticker sheets which needed to be separated from the back (a soldering iron might have helped in terms of difficulty), leaving 48 paper sheets 1” x 3” made of non-recyclable shiny paper. The salt was sealed in paper, the cappuccino had a paper cup with plastic sipping top that one peeled the top off of to sip through. Sugar comes wrapped in paper, the stirrers are either plastic or wood depending on which restaurant you use (at least they did away with the designer coke spoons they used to have).

The adult sandwich came wrapped in paper but sealed with a plastic tape. Drinks required the use four plastic straws wrapped in paper. The McFlurries came in a paper tub with a conical plastic top and oversized plastic spoon (which doubled as a stirring mechanism in some strange mixing machine. The donut came in its own paper bag. The sundae came in a plastic cup with plastic form fitting top and the piece de resistance, was a small plastic spoon wrapped in PLASTIC!

The refuse from this £17 feast for one family of five required three trips to the bin. Sitting atop the bin was a McDonald’s 4-colour process 20-page brochure entitled Our Environment – making a difference in your area where the company apparently pats itself on the back for their Bin It – find a bin, put litter in campaign and feels proud by saying, “we think that educating people not to drop litter in the first place is the best way to tackle this issue.”

In our house 80% of the refuse we generate is either taken to recycling or composted. We routinely separate everything into paper, plastice, cardboard, tin, glass and recyclable of all kinds. Once a week it is taken to the recycling center and over the last three years we have gone from 6 bags weekly for the landfill to less than 2.

So why is it McDonalds feels they don’t need to do the same and seem to pat themselves on the back for “job done” by printing a brochure about the environment when we generated at least two pounds of refuse that could be recycled with just one visit? Why do McDonalds pat themselves on the back for their concern because they recycle their cooking grease and cardboard boxes but nothing else? I mean a plastic bag around a plastic spoon !?!?!?

They spend pages talking about the steps they take at the front end of the food process using recycled materials then throw it away without a care at the back end with a highly cavalier attitude towards disposal of trash in their restaurants. Once someone drives away from the window there is nothing they can do and yes, it is nice that they are trying to educate folks to bin it. Now, how about doing the same inside your own stores as the volume of refuse is huge and it gets hauled away in colourfully clear sack so we can all see how much refuse we contributed by buying their products?

Yes it’s nasty work to have someone dedicated to sorting the refuse and if the commitment is there for every other aspect of the environment including bio-diesel from cooking oil, then why not do something positive about what comes out of your stores?

Well what you are McDonalds speaks louder than what you say. As one of the largest food companies in the world, you are a hypocritical polluter. No amount of flashy SPIN brochures will change that unless and until you do something in the stores to recycle this huge pile of waste.

It all smells of a smokescreen trying to get us to ignore the waste and focus on all the corporate good being done. It isn’t working. So now what?