Essay

McDonald's Sustainability

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NHL Stenden Hogeschool (NHL)

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McDonald’s corporation, being the largest fast food chain restaurant with over 36000
franchises in more than 108 countries of the world, has caused a lot of controversy concerning
their marketing strategies, sustainability, environmental friendliness and trustworthiness. After
the “Big Dipper” that happened in 2001, caused by a quickly developing fad of healthy eating,
McDonald’s corporation, having lost over $11 billion dollars, were forced to implement new,
healthier options into their menu, however, the masses kept claiming that McDonald’s cannot
keep up with the requests of the new, healthy and sustainable generation. Many have also
claimed that fast food restaurants cause too much harm to the environment. While that might
be true for some cases, it should be obvious that McDonald’s has greatly improved their
policies concerning sustainability, sanitary norms and so on.

First of all, many were concerned and it has been proved that McDonald’s, despite announcing
the opposite, still uses preservatives in 30% of its burgers. The study, published in the Journal
of Pediatrics and Child Health has found that calcium propionate, which is still used in some
burgers causes irritability, sleep disturbance and inattention in some children. Firstly, after the
research has been published, McDonald’s has handled the situation very well, by countering
with their own statements. Main counter argument was that McDonald’s has stopped using
preservatives in 70% of their main burgers, according to their announcements. Even more so,
the company has started working with Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef and released a
Beef Sustainability Report in 2014, where they shared their progress on the matter. So even
though the company still pursues to use preservatives in the minority of their products, it
cannot go unnoticed that they have made considerable progress regulating this issue.

There have been lots of people, who claimed that McDonald’s burgers in fact do not rot
because of how much chemicals are in them, therefore making a statement that it is a terrible
decision to eat those. In 1999 David Whipple has conducted as experiment by leaving a
McDonald’s burger on a cupboard and after 14 years he has found it completely untouched by
bacteria or any kind of rot. The rumours have been going around for years, up until the year of
2014, when research by Serious Eats was carried out to figure out the reason behind this
phenomenon. Even though it did turn out to be true that McDonald’s burgers do not rot, the
reason behind is, by no means, chemicals. The reason behind not-decaying burgers was the
dryness of the burger because of the way it is prepared. Since every component is fried super
fast, the burger loses most of its moisture, therefore not allowing the rotting process to start.
To support the previous statement, there has been a research carried out in 2018 by Ruqayyah
Moynihan and Lisa Boerop to show every step of production of the burger patties that are used
currently. The results have been published as an article in the Business Insider Nederland. To
summarize, there are special factories that produce 95% of burgers for McDonald’s and they
have a large amount of restrictions as to how the patties have to be produce. In fact every
certain portion of beef patties produced, a couple is tested to make sure they pass the
standards and if they do not, the whole portion is discarded. There are also many very strict
regulations as to sanitary norms for the employees and even for machines. That proves that
the concerns about the quality of burgers are based on insufficient knowledge of the subject
and prejudiced assumptions.

Lastly, there has been an ongoing debate about the sustainability of McDonald’s corporation.
The society has often claimed that huge corporations, such as McDonald’s are to blame for the
plastic waste in the ocean, deforestation, global warming, air & water pollution and other
environmental problems. Though it might be true most of the big companies nowadays,
McDonald’s is surely making huge progress to being one of the most sustainable ones in the
fast food industry. There have been many projects to ensure that not only does McDonald’s not
harm the surrounding, but also helps it in one way or another. As of 2018, they have
completely switched to using guest packaging made 100% out of foam. According to Tom
Murray, vice president of corporate partnerships at the Environmental Defence Fund,
McDonald’s is raising the sustainability bar high, by setting ambitious goals, like switching to
only using fiber-based packaging by 2020 or recycling 100% of guest packaging by 2025.
Furthermore, McDonald’s collaborate with many companies such as Forest Stewardship Council
(FSC) and participate in programs like Programme for Endorsement of Forest certification to
prevent the deforestation. Lastly, according to Sustainable Development Knowledge Platform,
McDonald’s has been donating a good part of its income to various charities and environmental
projects, even though there are technically no obligations to do so, with an exception of Indian
law.

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