Fast Food Brands 'Take away' Our Clean Image

The hedgerows and road verges of Northern Ireland are filled not with wildlife but with McDonald's burger boxes and drink cartons. That is the conclusion of TIDY Northern Ireland's latest survey, which has found that a super sized 19% of the fast food related litter polluting our province originates from McDonalds.

The anti-litter charity studied twenty miles of road verges leading out of our major towns and cities and found over 1,500 instances of fast food related litter, an average of 75 items per mile. Of those McDonald's packaging was the most commonly found branded item, although unbranded takeaways were responsible for even more of the pollution, accounting for 22%. Disposable coffee cups (16%) and drinks related items (14%) were also commonplace at the roadside. Branded litter was found from a wide variety of different takeaway outlets, but none were on the same scale as McDonalds. KFC was the second most commonly encountered brand with 3% of all the litter surveyed. Subway were third, accounting for 2% overall.

TIDY Northern Ireland Chief Executive Dr Ian Humphreys is hoping the findings will encourage all fast food outlets to shoulder their share of the blame and address the problem. "Obviously the public are the ones dropping the litter and they have to change their behaviour, but the fast food outlets also have to do their bit," he said. "TIDY Northern Ireland would like to see the fast food chains play a more active role in promoting the anti-littering message, and work with both local communities and organisations such as ourselves to ensure their name is not associated with the sort of behaviour that is making the road verges of Northern Ireland an eyesore. Fast food litter is present on over a quarter of all streets within the province, and if we are to reduce that figure then the takeaways have to make it easier for their customers to do the right thing, and that applies as much to the small village chip shop as it does to the biggest fast food chain in the world."

Source of fast food litter in Northern Ireland:

Unbranded22%

McDonalds 19%

Disposable Coffee Cups 16%

Drinks 14%

KFC 3%

Subway 3%

The surveys were conducted in the town centres and roads leading out of ten of the province's major towns and cities; Belfast, Derry, Portadown, Newry, Newtownards, Dungannon, Omagh, Coleraine, Ballymena and Lisburn.