McDonald’s New Paper Cups To Replace Polystyrene Coffee Cups

The company has taken a major environmental initiative, by launching a pilot program to drop the use of polystyrene foam cups. Their previous initiative was phasing out Styrofoam for its food packaging, but hot beverages were still served on polystyrene cups.

The program is testing a double-walled paper cup as replacement for polystyrene cups. It will involve 2,000 of their restaurants in the U.S primarily on the West Coast, that represent 15 percent of their restaurants in the U.S.

Since it is still on a testing process, the pilot program will asses; Customer acceptance, Operational impact and Overall importance.

This is definitely a great news for the environment. Especially with a move from a large international company like McDonald’s. They have done such move, in fact, in the past decade the company has reduced their waste by 30 percent, eliminated more than 300 million pounds of packaging, save $6 million per year, and is currently one of the largest purchasers of recycled paper for use in its food containers and napkin.

Having stated above that the company is making a major move “for the environment”, I wondered why is still their a need for testing? And why the customer’s acceptance are necessary? Well obviously, they are more focused on the company image or operation, rather than making it a move for healthier environment.

Let us just hope the tests goes well and the program is implemented across all their restaurants worldwide. And hopefully, other companies would follow on with environmental moves.

source: GreenBiz