Sunday, 17 April 2016

Post 402 - Messy litter polluting planet - McDonalds little plastic pots

Hey everyone today's Post 402 and yesterday I tweeted McDonalds to see if they could do something about a litter problem they have around one of their sites.


A bit of the litter I picked up at Quarry Moor
The sad thing is that this is a place I like to visit as it's great for wildlife as it's a nature reserve. I often go to walks around the area along the river in Ripon or to Fountains Abbey which is a fabulous place too, and then sometimes stop for dinner at McDonalds and then have a walk around Quarry Moor which is right next door. I did a little bit about this reserve as part of my reserves challenge on Post-384

Now I know it's not McDonalds that causes the litter, it's some of their customers. McDonalds does try to help - they have loads of bins around the reserve. I looked at their website too and they have people to pick litter up around the local area every so often, which is fantastic but it seems like it's a long time since they did that around the Ripon restaurant though. It's not only these little pots but also straws and the plastic drink cups that I've found around the reserve. I did pick some litter up here before but there's quiet a lot and it's a big site (see Post 400 - Care for nature? Clean for nature)

This is also a quote from the official McDonalds UK website:

At McDonald’s we recognise our responsibility to protect and preserve the environment for future generations. That is why we have a sustainable sourcing policy for food and packaging and aim to use our planet’s resources efficiently.

Do these really need to be plastic?
I have come up with several ideas but most of them will be very hard on a larger scale, but there is one thing that I see occurring quite often, this is where boxes and bottles are left in the same place for a very long time, or where they wash up on shores. So I would say that they need to start making everything out of an easily bio-degradable product. They've done that with a lot of the packaging so why not these little pots? I'm sure they won't be good for terrestrial wildlife but they will easily blow in to streams and float off into the sea and cause more problems for marine wildlife too. Their website has some good messages about the environment, but there's nothing at all about trying to keep wildlife safe.

But what really bugs me out of all things, is that they still haven't responded to my Tweet. If you look at the Tweets that have been sent they're all about people shouting, and sometimes swearing, about how their burgers are cold are that their wraps don't have something in them or that they haven't had their monopoly stickers. So is this what it actually takes for them to notice you?! Does it mean that I have to be as abusive and horrible as some people in MY Tweets, because if it does, then I really don't know what they've made this world come to, they're going to try and make a young lad who's really passionate about nature be as angry and abusive as possible just to get something nice done? Well I sent them this Tweet trying to prompt them to respond:


Well after over 30 hours I still haven't received a response. And I'm starting to wonder if I'll ever get a response. I mean, I'm never going to get to the point in which I have to be angry at all, I'm not that sort of person, and I really don't want anybody to get like that. I've had plenty of people backing me up like Matt Doogue (who by the way has been with me right from the start, Day 1)


and Team for Nature UK (who has inspired me an awful lot)


And Dave Renwick (Who you'll be very familiar with being amazingly helpful to me!)

So you can see just a couple of the many responses that I've had all supporting me.  I'll just point out also that this is also part of my #CleanforNature campaign! It would be nice to get a little change made that would make a big difference to nature.

So McDonalds. Can you change your pots, straws and other plastic packaging to something biodegradable please? Could one of your litter patrols or Community Clean up events help clean up Quarry Moor please? (I'll even help if it's not a school day). And most of all, I've asked nicely and I'm not being horrible to your company, so could I please have an answer to my questions, please?


Hope you enjoyed,

Z.
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1 comment:

  1. Natasha18 April 2016 at 18:37

    This is fantastic Zach - I completely agree with you. I've also shared your tweet and blogspot to spur things along. Keep fighting the good fight! - Tasha

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