McDonald’s Will Get Rid of Plastic Toys in Happy Meals by 2025 | Eater

"Long a global pioneer of the grab-and-go fast-food model, this multinational chain popularized single-use plastic in restaurants and introduced the Happy Meal with a small plastic toy in 1979; it now sells about 1 billion Happy Meals per year. Facing criticism and research linking it to a disproportionate share of coastal plastic pollution in the U.K., the company pledged in 2018 that all packaging would be recycled or otherwise sustainable by 2025 and has set targets to reduce carbon emissions by 2030. In response to rising customer demand for climate-consciousness, it plans to remove 90% of virgin fossil-fuel-based plastic from Happy Meal toys by 2025—replacing them with paper, cardboard puzzles, and figurines—and says the change is cost-neutral and equivalent to 650,000 people stopping their annual plastic use; the chain has already cut toy plastic by roughly 30% in the U.K., Ireland, and France since 2018. Critics note the company’s historical role in driving single-use consumption, question how promised emission cuts will be enforced across suppliers that lack reporting or targets, and argue that these largely reactive, incremental shifts may be insufficient given the scale and urgency of the climate crisis." - Elazar Sontag