We have recycling bins at home, within our offices, schools, parks, and basically anywhere you go within Australia you will find a recycling bin... except within McDonald's restaurants.

There are no in-store recycling bins available to customers within the McDonald's Australia restaurants. As a result, customers must dispose of their waste into the general waste bins. This waste is presumably diverted to landfill and left to rot. Considering there are over 780 restaurants within Australia, with about 85,000 people employed, you can imagine the amount of waste which is generated daily.

When I queried McDonald's recently, I received the following response:

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"Dear Abdul Rahim

Thank you for your email. McDonald's care about the environment and will always look for ways to improve it. In an effort to reduce the volume of waste, McDonald's recycles as much of its waste as possible, particularly "behind the counter", where 50 percent of an average restaurant's waste is generated. Due to much of McDonald's packaging material being heavily contaminated by food and liquids, it is difficult to establish effective recycling schemes within our dining areas which can cope with our contaminated waste streams. Therefore due to these contamination issues and aided by the high percentage of our waste stream that is compostable (85 per cent), composting appears to be our best option at this stage.

Regards

xxxxxx

McDonald's Customer Service"

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I petition that McDonald's establish an effective in-store recycling scheme that can cope with contaminated packaging material. We need the following:

1. McDonald's to produce products which are recyclable.

2. McDonald's to provide recycling bins in-store to dispose of this waste correctly.