Recycling on the menu for McDonald’s Australia
Leading food retailer McDonald’s Australia has found another way to become an environmental leader and help major businesses buy recycled through its association with the Buy Recycled Business Alliance (BRBA).

McDonald’s, along with other leaders in the industry, founded the BRBA in 1999 as a business-led initiative that would provide a forum to promote greater uptake of recycled content products (RCPs) across Australia.

Roslyn Dent, Director Environmental Management at McDonald’s Australia and BRBA Chair, said the BRBA has provided McDonald’s with an opportunity to express its environmental leadership.

“McDonald’s is already a major buyer of recycled products so it was a natural fit for us. Through the BRBA, we saw a way of finding out what other businesses are doing and learn from their experience,” Dent said.

“It is very beneficial to be linked to an alliance that has positive environmental outcomes. We are part of a group of like-minded organisations that can support the value of the actions we are doing. By being a member of the BRBA, we are also closer to manufacturers who are also members of the BRBA, making the purchasing process better informed,” she said.

According to Roslyn, being part of the BRBA has helped McDonald’s become more sustainable.

“Working with the BRBA helped McDonald’s refine an environmental profile tool for suppliers to complete, enabling purchasing managers to be best informed of any potential issues that may arise. Quality and relationship documents were also reviewed and revisions made to ensure environmental issues were sufficiently prominent,” Dent said.

“McDonald’s has made a recent decision to purchase clear plastic cups and desert containers which contain a minimum of 35% post consumer recycled content PET (Polyethylene terephthalate) as of early 2007 as opposed to being virgin polystyrene.

“Even though only a minority of people challenge organisations about their environmental impacts, it is important for McDonald’s to be seen as sustainable because we want to do the right thing and make the right decision for our environment,” she said.

McDonald’s participated in 2002 in the BRBA ‘Buy Recycled’ Coach Program, an initiative whereby members are ‘coached’ in buying recycled principles and practices. The Program supports the BRBA’s emphasis on moving from theory to practice by providing members with hands-on experience.

“The BRBA gave McDonald’s a structured plan to help trial recycled content products across the business and look at ways of enhancing employee awareness. The Program gave us an outside scope on our operations and a greater understanding of the products we purchase,” she said.

“With our improved system, other corporate services at McDonald’s can have a look at our purchasing process and learn from it,” Dent said.

Roslyn said the BRBA is in the process of producing a tool which will facilitate wider uptake of RCPs by helping members as well as other organisations and individuals identify products that meet their requirements.

“The BRBA is currently developing an online national database of RCPs with key information about each product. My role as Chair of the BRBA will be to educate the members on how to use the database,” Dent said.

The Buy Recycled Business Alliance (BRBA) is a non profit pro-sustainability alliance of businesses that are united by a commitment to promote the purchase and use of recycled content products (RCPs) and materials, which strongly contributes to corporate sustainability.

Foundation members of the BRBA include Amcor, McDonalds, Visy Industries, Foster’s Group, Corporate Express, Fuji Xerox and Australian Paper.

For more information on the BRBA, please visit www.brba.com.au or call 1300 662 593.

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Released for the Buy Recycled Business Alliance by Dennis Rutzou Public Relations (www.drpr.com.au).
For further information please call Kim Larochelle or Fiona Pennington on
(02) 9413 4244.