As France readies to impose a new law to combat waste and promote recycling, fast-food eateries, including McDonald's MCD and KFC, will soon be prohibited from using disposable containers, plates, cups and tableware for customers dining in restaurants.
What Happened: The fast-food chains are worried that they need to hire an additional dishwasher and more hosts to explain that plates, knives and forks must now be separated from trash, McDonald’s manager Maria Varela in the Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret told AFP.
Varela said the kitchen had to be remodeled to cope with the new requirements, noting that “at first it was very complicated, both at the counter and with table service.”
“Everything that was in cardboard is now in reusable plastic. We had to rethink everything in the kitchen, separate take-out from on-site orders, create new storage space.”
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The report noted that roughly 30,000 quick-service restaurants in France serve six billion meals a year, generating an estimated 180,000 tons of waste.
The latest measure from France's 2020 law to combat waste, which will come into force from Jan. 1, has upended business models based on single-use packaging and utensils, both for eating in and for take-out.
The decision has drawn massive criticism from the European Paper Packaging Alliance, which said that most single-use containers are made of renewable resources and have a recycling rate of 82% across the European Union.
It also says making and washing durable items consumes more energy and water, defeating a purpose of the environmental cause.
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