McDonald’s sucked into move to ban plastic straws

The plastic drinking straw, one of the smallest components in the mountain of trash remaining after the typical fast-food meal, has become an unlikely battleground in the war on waste.

A proposal being presented to McDonald’s shareholders at their annual meeting Thursday asks that the chain find alternatives to plastic straws at its more than 36,000 global restaurants .

All told, the U.S. produced 258 million tons of municipal solid waste in 2014, compared to 88 million tons in 1960, based on the most recent EPA data. And almost a quarter of it was various containers and packaging.

McDonald’s is recommending shareholders vote against the straw study proposal.

“We have adopted compostable straws in certain markets to meet regulations, while we work with packaging experts to develop a planet-friendly, cost-effective answer for all McDonald’s restaurants,” it said Monday.

It is replacing plastic straws with paper ones in a test this month in some U.K. restaurants.

“Straws are an important issue because, for the most part, we can do without them,” said Sondhya Gupta, a London-based senior campaigner for SumOfUs, which estimated McDonald’s hands out million of straws daily. “You just get them popped into a drink without thinking about them. They are small and they are light, so they are difficult to recycle.”

The consumer organization cites an academic journal story that appeared last year estimating only nine per cent of plastics ever produced were recycled.

McDonald’s has pledged to make all customer packaging from renewable, recycled or certified sources by 2025, up from 50 per cent. It will also institute recycling at all its restaurants by 2025, up from 10 per cent.

And Starbucks has set aside $10 million to award grants to inventors in the quest for a compostable coffee cup.