Would you like your forest for here or to go?
–Quick and dirty fast food packaging
Packaging symbolizes the disposable society we have become. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the fast food industry with drive-through windows, french fries, burgers and hundreds of on the go food choices. Last year sales for the 400 largest U.S.-based fast food chains were $277.2 billion (6.8% increase from the year before). Our fast food lifestyle is literally burying us in an avalanche of excessive packaging and waste. Every year millions of pounds of food packaging waste litter our roadways, clog our landfills and spoil our quality of life. But more than litter, today’s fast food packaging is destroying our Sothern Forests.
Fast food industry giants including McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Pizza Hut, KFC , Taco Bell, and more are big buyers of paper packaging from the forests of the Southern United States. With nearly 100 paper packaging mills in the South, the packaging decisions of these corporations have a tremendous impact on our forests. While these companies are always coming up with new menus items, promotions and updated brands, the fast food companies continue to source their paper packaging from the paper mills connected to out-moded business as usual forestry practices including large-scale clearcutting, logging of special endangered forests, and the conversion of natural forests to sterile industrial pine plantations. THERE IS A BETTER WAY.
Southern forests and more specifically the Southern Swampland region of the Mid-Atlantic Coast, are jewels of the American landscape, and are being destroyed to bring you fried chicken, burgers and fries, and super-sized convenience in a glut of wrappers, boxes and cups.