Ecologists Wooed McDonald’s Quietly
McDonald’s pleased a lot of people last week when it announced, working with the Environmental Defense Fund, that it would replace its polystyrene boxes with biodegradable paper. Other fast-food companies have used paper for years, but a change at McDonald’s can change the whole industry.
McDonald’s, after all, has 11,000 restaurants, and if it wants paper, suppliers will rush to provide it. It’s like the old story of the 600-pound gorilla. Where does it sleep? Anywhere it wants.
Many people took this tale as an example of how policy changes come about these days: A big company, committed to a principle, makes a change, and the industry follows. No one refuses the gorilla.
But they may have the roles wrong. The gorilla is apparently the Environmental Defense Fund, a Washington-based group which formed a task force with McDonald’s to discuss waste product reduction--a debate others have waged with McDonald’s for years, with less success.
The episode says something interesting about power, and about what EDF Executive Director Fred Krupp calls “the beginning of a new era of environmental problem solving.” Said a McDonald’s executive, EDF “kept our feet in the fire.”
EDF wouldn’t seem to speak for McDonald’s vast public. As environmental groups go, its membership of 200,000 is large but hardly mighty. And neither those 200,000, nor the public at large, were privy to the negotiations, although public concerns were the issue. In the past, such concerns have been played out more openly--through the courts, in class-action suits or in governmental hearings, followed closely by an interested public.
In fact, environmental issues are of interest to more people now. A 1989 ABC/Washington Post poll found that 76% of Americans considered themselves “environmentalists.” Today, 90% of consumers say they’ll even pay more for environmentally sound products, according to a recent study by Abt Associates, a Cambridge, Mass., research-based consulting firm, and 50% can cite actual purchases.
Unfortunately, says the study, their choices are often based on misinformation or misplaced trust. People who wouldn’t “believe a company’s claims when they’re in an ad,” says Abt senior analyst Andrew Stoeckle, “might believe a statement on a label because they think somebody watches labels.”
Apparently, consumers are easy to play, which makes it tempting for groups pushing change to take their posture directly to the public. But they take a real chance.
Consider last year, when a gorilla wannabe called the Natural Resources Defense Counsel sounded alarms about apples reminiscent of the great cranberry scare of 30 years before. Cranberries were initially condemned as contaminated by a dangerous weed killer and finally judged only selectively contaminated--in amounts dangerous only if eaten by the carload.
Same with the apples. Alar, a growth regulator used for apples, was condemned by the NRDC and its spokeswoman, actress Meryl Streep. The apple industry--with some support from the Environmental Protection Agency--defended Alar, saying its use was spotty, minimal and already voluntarily decreased. When it was all over, there was significant damage to the apple industry, Meryl Streep, the EPA and the NRDC, but truth prevailed, whatever it was (after that flap, does anyone remember?).
At least the fight was public. There was debate--and with debate, the possibility of understanding and consensus. There was also a lot of sturm, a lot of drang and a lot of newsprint wasted--something that won’t happen in the new era.
Legislation, the people’s traditional decision-making process, is still a possibility. Indeed, the threat of legislation may have helped sway McDonald’s to EDF’s viewpoint, given the flurry of local ordinances outlawing polystyrene food packaging--in Berkeley, Portland, Ore., Minneapolis, Newark.
But legislation--particularly gorilla-sized legislation--is getting too iffy for environmental questions, as California voters, among others, proved this week when they rejected a ballot proposition with something in it for every environmental cause--water, air, ozone, produce, trees. These being complex issues, it may have been too difficult or just too long or too easily confused with similar propositions placed on the ballot by opponents who wanted to cause confusion.
There’s always government, and the consumer’s lingering instinct to turn to designated experts for guidance, if not rule. The EPA, the Food and Drug Administration, even the Federal Trade Commission could probably do a better job of defining public policy and setting goals (are today’s jobs worth depleting tomorrow’s resources? Is it better to create plastic hillsides, or to deplete wood forests?), but it would precipitate more debate.
The McDonald’s-EDF arrangement certainly reveals the advantages of keeping such decisions private. Few consumers know whether the winning principle--paper over plastic--is the best idea. Few even know the source of EDF’s 600-pound strength. But something was decided--and with little public disruption.
It should be a relief to leave it all to the gorillas. We’d never have to think again.
