Executive Summary
McDonald is one of the leading resultant chains in the world. The company has numerous stores worldwide and they sell numerous food products around the world. Due to the products they sell, they generate a lot of wastes to environment. The company has been in the process of promoting environmentally sustainable practices in the major operations.
The company also ensures that the fundamental human rights are not violated by the company and their suppliers. The company is among the members of the UN global compact. In this paper, two key principles were examined; these were, promoting environmental sustainability and protection of human rights. To protect the environment, the company promotes wastes reduction, reuse of materials and recycling.
To protect human rights, the company has stringent rules and regulations that ensure the workers’ rights are not violated. The company also relies on the use of corporate social responsibility (CSR) so as to promote environmental protection activities among its consumers.
Introduction
McDonalds is one of the leading food service retailers in the world. The corporation receives over 52 million customers worldwide. The company has over 34000 restaurants which operate in 119 countries. The company has established many brands that are respected all round the world (Failla, 2012).
Due to this fact, the company has the potential to influence million of people around the world through their public opinion and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities (Kotler & Lee, 2005). Despite its huge success, the company faces many challenges especially in terms of environmental sustainability and to a lesser extent, the protection of human rights.
The company is among the retail chain companies that have embraced the principles of environmental sustainability and is a member of the global compact. Various strategies can be used by the company to promote environmental protection.
Among the most common method is the use of CSR activities to promote the good health and environmental protection strategies, reduction of wastes, improving packaging and minimizing activities that have negative impacts on the environment (Jamison, 2005). In this paper, two principle recommendation and their implementation strategies are discussed.
Recommendations For Principle 2
Recommendation 2 deals with protection of human rights. All over the world the fundamental rights of human beings must be respected and maintained.
Implementation For Principle 2
Core values of the company
One of the core values of the company is the respect for the fundamental rights of human beings. The company core values outline that the fundamental human rights must be respected and they adhere to these rules and regulations (McDonalds Corporation, 2013).
Suppliers code of conduct
The company has implemented a stringent code of conduct for a supplier which ensures that the fundamental human rights are respected.
The suppliers of the company are supposed to ensures that they adhere to the UN declarations of human rights, they must give their workers freedom to express themselves, the suppliers should be qualified and legally authorized with supporting documentation, the suppliers must not promote child/underage labour, suppliers must make sure that workers are well paid and there is no discrimination (McDonalds, 2012).
Recommendations From Principle 8 (Environmental Sustainability)
Environmental sustainability is one of the key areas that the company has sought to improve, the company has adapted several measures to ensure that the environmental is clean and they also promote safe and environmentally friendly practices (Svoboda, 1995).
McDonalds main agenda are: to maximize efficiency which results to waste minimization, recycle packaging materials, control soil erosion. Various CSR activities are also carried out to ensure the promotion of safe environmentally sustainable practices by the consumers (Hartman & Desjardins, 2007).
Implementation Of Principle 8
Source reduction
One of the main ways of promoting safe and sustainable environmental practices is through source reduction. McDonald has in the past years introduced a raft of measures that are geared towards reductions of materials and energy used in the food production process (Smith, 2007).
The company set up a task force to identify areas where potential wastes could be reduced. These include: changing the packaging materials, shipping containers and the packaging style for different products.
Recycling
The company main problem is in the utilization of packaging materials. Most of the packaging materials used by the company are made of paper and unlike metallic cans and plastic bottle which can be burned to kill food bacteria, papers cannot be cleaned easily (Ackerman, 1996). FDA regulations also restrict the use of paper for recycling and repacking of food materials.
Most of the wastes are in form of paper packages and it makes up 42% of the total wastes. The main strategy undertaken by the company is to recycle non food packaging materials. The company is also trying to educate the public on ways of discarding litter using separate containers so as to enhance the ability to recycle.
The company also sensitizes the customers on the need to reuse and recycle and this motivates the customers to participate in the recycle process. The company has several CSR programs that are intended to keep the streets clean. Through these programs, the company’s agenda of health and environmental sustainability are discussed and this enlightens the community and invites them to join with the company towards a common goal.
Benefits And Risks
The company faces a number of potential risks and challenges when implementing the aforementioned strategies. The main benefits are that the strategies will reduce environmental pollution and also encourage employee satisfaction. The main challenges are
- Environmental protection: the company in its quest for environmental protection uses recycling as one of the methods of controlling wastes. This is however very difficult as it is not possible to recycle waste packaging papers used to pack food stuff.
- Environmental protection by the company faces many challenges as all the stakeholders must be managed so as to ensure that measures instituted by the company works. This calls for the use of CSR to train the consumers on the need to protect the environment and also sensitize them on ways through which they can dispose or recycle packaging materials used by McDonald’s (McDonald’s corporation, 2008).
- Though the company has stringent rules to protect the fundamental rights of individuals, the main challenges come in imposing these rules to suppliers. McDonalds has a policy on human rights abuse by suppliers but it is very hard to monitor them as this would introduce added costs.
Conclusions
In culmination, McDonald Company has been making significant efforts towards improving the environment and also protecting the fundamental human rights.
The company has initiated many measures geared towards environmental sustainability and has also formulated rules and regulation that control and prevent human rights abuse. The implementation of all these strategies has potential risks and challenges and the restaurant management must develop appropriate implementation methods so as to ensure that their campaigns are successful.
Bibliography
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Failla, John, “McDonald’s Reports Global Green Practices – Green Retail Decisions,” Green Retail Decisions,2012, Hartman Laura and Desjardins. Joseph. “Business Ethics: Decision-Making for Personal Integrity and Social Responsibility”. California: McGraw-Hill/Irwin, 2007. Web.
Jamison, Alison. “Defining Corporate Environmental Responsibility: Canadian ENGO Perspectives,” 2005. Web.
Kotler, Philip and Lee, Nancy. “Corporate social responsibility: doing the most good for your company and your cause”, Washington: John Wiley and Sons, 2005.
McDonalds. “McDonalds suppliers code of practice”, 2012. Web.
McDonalds Corporation. “Worldwide corporate responsibility, report responsible food for a sustainable future”. Web.
McDonalds Corporation. “Standards of Business Conduct, the Promise of the Golden Arches”. Web.
Smith, Rebecca. “Energy: McDonald’s Cooks up energy-savings plan.” The Wall Street Journal, July, 2007.
Svoboda, Susan, “Case A: McDonald’s Environmental Strategy”. Web.