McDonald’s and Air New Zealand are continuing the effort of big business to reduce plastic waste, announcing separate moves to reduce single-use plastics in their products.
Air New Zealand announced it will substitute a further 14 single-use plastic products from its supply chain over the next 12 months.
Meanwhile, McDonald’s announced that from tomorrow, straws will be available on request only at the 167 restaurants across the country along with a trial of fibre-based straws.
At a sustainability breakfast this morning, Air NZ committed to replacing five single-use plastic products across domestic services, including water cups, café cups and lids, Koru Hour cheese plates and lids, as well as nine types of plastic bags network-wide, with lower impact alternatives over the year.
The move comes after the airline removed single-use plastic straws, stir sticks, eye mask wrappers and plastic toothbrushes earlier this year.
Over a 12 month period this will see the airline reduce its plastic footprint by 260,000 plastic toothbrushes, 3,000 straws, 7.1 million stirrers and 260,000 eye mask wrappers.
"Plastics are top of mind for us and our customers. Several of our waste and plastic reduction initiatives have been brought about by our employees telling us we can do better in this area. We know these are small steps but given our scale, they do result in a significant amount of single-use plastic being avoided," said Air NZ's Head of Sustainability Lisa Daniell.
"If we were to line up all of the plastic stirrers we are replacing across our network, they would span the length of Cape Reinga to Taupo (around 700km).
"We are also working closely with our suppliers, who to date have been really supportive in helping us search for new ways to directly procure a number of inflight single-use plastic products, as has the Ministry for the Environment."
Meanwhile McDonald's said in a statement it planned to be part of the solution and help influence change.
"With our scale, McDonald's has a responsibility to look after the environment, and although the straw itself is just one type of packaging we need to consider, it’s a great start and something our customers told us they wanted to support," David Howse, McDonald’s New Zealand Managing Director, said.
McDonald's restaurants in Orewa, Havelock North and Queenstown will also be trialling a new fibre-based straw by the end of the year with the performance of the straws to be monitored and customer feedback gathered.
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