Monday 2nd March 2020: McDonald’s Australia has today announced they will be phasing out plastic cutlery from all its restaurants nationwide by the end of this year. The transition to fibre-based cutlery means Macca’s will be removing 585 tonnes of plastic per year.

This commitment is in addition to McDonald’s decision to transition to an alternative straw option later this year. The move away from plastic straws by McDonald’s in Australia, equates to 500 million plastic straws being removed from circulation annually.

McDonald’s Australia, Director of Supply Chain and Sustainability, Kylie Freeland said, “We’re committed to being an industry leader in sustainable practices, ultimately using our scale for good to positively impact challenges facing the communities we operate in.

“By removing plastic straws and cutlery from McDonald’s restaurants, we are continuing to reduce our environmental footprint and will be removing more than 860 tonnes of plastic from our system,” added Freeland.

For more than a decade now, McDonald’s has been actively scoping and introducing initiatives that reduce the plastic used within its packaging requirements, with the removal of plastic lids from McFlurry cups, salad bowls being replaced with a fibre-based alternative and sundae cups now being lighter in weight.

These changes alone removed nearly 250 tonnes of plastic from McDonald’s Australia restaurants, and by weight, now 85 percent of Macca’s packaging is fibre-based.

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For further information please contact:

Tina Alldis on 0428 401 211 or tina.alldis@au.mcd.com

Farley Fitzgerald on 0455 306 788 or Farley.fitzgerald@au.mcd.com

About McDonald’s Australia

Australia’s first McDonald’s restaurant opened in Yagoona, Sydney, in 1971. Today there are over 990 McDonald’s restaurants across Australia, nearly 85 percent of which are franchised and run by local businessmen and women. The organisation employs more than 105,000 people in restaurants and corporate offices Australia-wide and is the largest employer of youth in the country. McDonald’s creates more than 3,000 new jobs each year and spends over $40 million per annum on training and people development.

For more information visit www.mcdonalds.com.au or www.facebook.com/McDonaldsAU. McDonald’s is also on Twitter – check us out at Twitter.com/maccas.