A McDonald’s meal offered in reusable dishes, in Levallois-Perret (Hauts-de-Seine), December 20, 2022. JULIEN DE ROSA / AFP
“Disposables for fast food, it’s really over!,” announced the French Minister of the Environment Christophe Béchu on Twitter, December 6, 2022. A reference to the ban on disposable tableware in fast food restaurants for meals eaten on site. A pioneering measure in Europe that came into force on January 1. The new ban marks another step on the long road to the end of single-use plastic, set for 2040 by the 2020 anti-waste law, after the ban on straws and disposable cutlery.
According to estimates by the ministry of environmental transition, the measure should prevent 20 billion pieces of cutlery, cups, plates and other single-use containers from being thrown away, or about 150,000 tons of waste per year. The large fast-food chains, which serve about 6 billion meals per year in 40,000 establishments, are specifically targeted by the law – which also applies to institutional catering. The organization Zero Waste France, who pushed for the measure in 2017 during the review of the anti-waste bill, had estimated that McDonald’s generated more than a kilo of packaging thrown away per second.
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