McDonald’s Happy Meal toys caught in backlash over plastic
British petition calls for fast-food giant to scrap plastic toys included in kids’ meals
LONDON—The plastic backlash has a new target: Happy Meal toys.
A British petition calling for McDonald’s Corp. to scrap the plastic toys included with kids’ meals has garnered over 325,000 signatures, and the country’s environment minister is pressing the case.
The rising scrutiny shows how concerns about the environmental impacts of plastic are broadening from single-use products, like straws and coffee cups, to items some view as unnecessary or short-lived. The focus is no longer just on waste, but also the impact production has on climate change.
Many toys, including those in Happy Meals, typically can’t be recycled because they are made of multiple kinds of plastic, or plastic mixed with other materials. Parents say these often end up in the trash.
“You open a plastic bag to get another plastic item, which is played with for five minutes and then probably goes in the bin,” said Rachael Wood, whose daughters Ella and Caitlin, ages 10 and 7, started the petition late last year. The petition also targets Burger King.
McDonald’s last year set up a global working group to study environmental issues related to its Happy Meal packaging and toys, Elaine Strunk, its head of global sustainability, said in an interview. Through the group, the fast-food chain is exploring ways to make its toys from a single type of plastic so they can more easily be recycled, and is researching whether some renewable materials
could be used in place of plastic for its toys, she said.
In the U.K., McDonald’s said last month it would swap out two hard plastic toys for books for a six-to-eight-week period. It will also include some soft toys and board games in the second half of this year, amounting to a 60% reduction in hard plastic compared with the first six months.
The change took concerns about plastic into consideration but was based on a variety of
factors, including the popularity of the books, and was decided before the petition surfaced, according to a spokeswoman.
“Given the focus on plastics you probably will see a bit more of a mix going forward,” she said, adding McDonald’s hasn’t made a long-term commitment to scale back on plastic tied to its Happy Meals.
A spokeswoman for Burger King, which offers plastic toys with its King Jr kids’ meals, said the company is working on developing “alternative toy solutions,” declining to provide details. Britain has become a hot spot for plastic concerns, with some measures to cut waste here later rolled out to other markets.
In September, McDonald’s replaced plastic straws with paper across its 1,361 restaurants in the U.K. and Ireland. It is now testing alternatives to plastic straws in the U.S. and elsewhere.
McDonald’s recently removed plastic lids from McFlurry ice creams and moved to cardboard containers for salads in the U.K., one of its most established international markets.
In Japan, McDonald’s surveyed Japanese mothers, finding many wanted to recycle their children’s used toys but didn’t know how. It collected 1.27 million used plastic toys through boxes in 2,900 restaurants during a 10-week trial last year, recycling these into trays for its restaurants. Ms. Strunk says the company is researching ways to scale this and make it permanent.
When the Happy Meal hit the U.S. market in 1979, it was intended as a short promotion. Executives worried about the complexity of additional menu items and toys, recalls Colleen Fahey, a consultant who worked on the launch.
But families loved it and a subsequent partnership with Walt Disney Co. made the toys a huge draw.
Over time the Happy Meal got a bad rap for marketing fast food to children. McDonald’s has been trying to make it more nutritious, by adding water and fruit among other moves.
Plastic concerns are a newer challenge. U.K. Environment Minister Thérese Coffey last year publicly called for McDonald’s to scrap plastic toys in Happy Meals and has since met with the company. “Every nudge will help,” she told The Wall Street Journal last week.
Petitions in previous years in various countries, calling on companies to stop handing out plastic toys, haven’t gotten much traction.
Ms. Wood said her daughters’ petition attracted so much interest because awareness about plastic waste is high. “It’s come at a time when people are suddenly having a lightbulb moment.”
Late last year, Ms. Wood helped her daughters create the petition online following discussions in school, which she says stoked their awareness about the impact plastic products were having on the environment. The girls told her what they wanted to say in the petition after visiting McDonald’s and put a poster in a window at their home saying “down with plastic,” said Ms. Wood.
While Wendy’s Co. and Sonic Corp., which operates a drive-in hamburger chain, also give away toys with children’s meals, others have scrapped the practice. In 2011, hamburger chain Jack in the Box stopped including toys with its meals, and in 2013, Taco Bell stopped offering toys and kids’ meals in the U.S.
Some companies have batted away concerns about plastic toys. Italian candy maker Ferrero International SA, which distributes over 3.5 billion plastic toys in its chocolate Kinder eggs every year, describes its toys as an “integral and inseparable part of the product.” These are “durable goods not single-use plastics,” a spokesman said.