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How believable must greenwashing campaigns be nowadays? (mcdonalds.de)
1 point by moritzwarhier on Aug 22, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 3 comments



Apology in advance: content is in German and country-specific.

A Google Translate link won't work because of language-specific content that is apparently rendered client-side after accepting the data collection modal.

The slogan of the campaign is "I'm beautiful" (similar to the once-popular pop song). The campaign celebrates McDonald's ostensively outdtanding recycling efforts and frames it as a net-positive contribution to the environment. At least the last sentence is what I take away from the claim that a McD cup would be "beautiful" because they claim it would be recycled to provide material for school books.

Are there people on HN who believe that this is a valuable contribution, not "greenwashing"?


I am amused that since

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLibel_case

McDonald's has been a leader in "Corporate Social Responsibility" since that court case forced them to rebut (or attempt to rebut) every single claim made in that pamphlet.

If you compare it with its competitors on many issues McDonalds is rarely the worst, for instance, portion sizes at other restaurants like Applebees are much more "supersized". McDonalds did keep with styrofoam packaging long after most competitors had gone to "wax" papers but now we know those are loaded with dangerous PFAS.

Not to defend McDonalds but their prominence does mean people are very aware of the issues they have and thus they feel a lot of need for PR.

My RSS reader YOShInOn keeps statistics on what things the HN community finds interesting and one that surprises me a little is that it seems I can never get an upvote on anything about advanced plastic recycling technology such as chemical recycling to the monomer, making alloys of two plastics, biobased plastics, etc.


Thanks for your answer! I agree and was honestly considering this when I posted (admittedly the title was meant to be somewhat response-provoking):

> If you compare it with its competitors on many issues McDonalds is rarely the worst,

Deliveries from local restaurants or ghost kitchens partnering with takeaway.com are often much worse regarding packaging and at least as common here as McD.

Still also lots of waste at McD. A special thing here is caused by tax differences:

Most McD restaurants I've been to package your order in a takeaway bag even if you explicitly pick "Eat here" when starting your order on the terminal.

It means they need to pay only half the tax.




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