“We wanted this to make good business sense,” Langert explains. “You don’t want to make decisions you’re going to reverse down the road because they’re not economical.”
In addition to the environmental and economical benefits of the program, WRAP also provided fodder for the McDonald’s marketing team. Trayliners and food packaging boasted of the company’s commitment to various environmental causes and showed the public that the chain was trying to help.
Though McDonald’s no longer reports on its WRAP progress, many of the initiatives put in place through the program are still in use. Close to 90 percent of the company’s packaging is made from renewable resources, and a third is made up of recycled content. “The framework, the guidelines in how we approach packaging, it’s deeper now that it ever has been,” Langert says.
In 2004 the company began using a bulk cooking oil distribution service for some of its restaurants. Through the service, the result of a joint venture between Golden State Service Industries, a subsidiary of Golden State Foods, and Restaurant Technologies, Inc., cooking oil is delivered in bulk from depots by tanker trucks, which pump the oil directly into tanks leading to the fryers at the restaurant, eliminating the need for wasteful packaging.
In fact, the 300 McDonald's restaurants currently using the service, which is based in Greensboro, North Carolina, reduce their waste from corrugated and plastic by approximately 1,500 pounds per location per year. At present, about 6,500 McDonald's restaurants participate in some type of bulk-oil distribution program, and the company anticipates that the number will continue to grow.
But for some owners and franchisees, corporate guidelines on waste reduction might not go far enough. Take, for example, Ian and Lori MacIsaac, owners of four Tim Hortons restaurants in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, an area renowned in Canada for its stringent recycling program.
“Rather than dumping the garbage into one black garbage bag, you put the compost with the compost, the plastic with the plastic, and the paper with the paper,” explains Lori MacIsaac. Any improperly sorted garbage gets left on the curb come collection day in Bridgewater.
In order to comply with the program, the MacIsaacs’ restaurants began doing something out of the ordinary for quick-serves: They asked customers to leave their trash on the tables. Employees clear the tables themselves, ensuring that recyclables, organics, and trash are all put in their respective containers.
Now the busiest of MacIsaacs’ stores fills 12 compost bins with organic waste that previously went to the landfill. MacIsaac estimates that the actual garbage—apart from the recyclables and compost—has been reduced by 50–75 percent.
“Once it started, it was amazing how little garbage we do produce,” MacIsaac says. “We realized how wasteful we really were.”
The program, which has been in place for about five years, was surprisingly simple to implement, MacIsaac says. The local recycling authority helped provide initial training to employees and returns for support when needed. It also helps that Bridgewater citizens are expected to do the same type of sorting in their own homes.