McDonald's serve tens of billions of meals a year, and almost all of it leaves as waste. We estimate they produce around 2.7 million metric tonnes (nearly 6 billion pounds) of waste in 2026, counting packaging, food and the rest of their operations.
McDonald's only put a figure on one slice of that, the guest packaging they buy, about 1.22 million tonnes a year. The food they throw away and their back-of-house waste go unreported, so we have estimated those to reach a total.
McDonald's report the weight of their packaging, but never a total for everything they throw away. Add the food and back-of-house waste they leave out, and McDonald's produce an estimated 2.7 million tonnes of waste a year, more than double the figure they disclose.
McDonald's packaging totals (2020-2026)
McDonald's disclose their packaging weight each year in their annual sustainability accounting (SASB) disclosure, so four of the years below are the company's own reported figures rather than our estimates.
| Year | Packaging and toys (metric tonnes) | Change on prior year (tonnes) | Change on prior year (%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 1,219,000 | +36,000 | +3.0% |
| 2025 | 1,183,000 | +34,000 | +3.0% |
| 2024 | 1,148,893 | +68,000 | +6.3% |
| 2023 | 1,080,710 | +27,000 | +2.5% |
| 2022 | 1,054,000 | +26,000 | +2.5% |
| 2021 | 1,028,209 | +178,000 | +21.0% |
| 2020 | 850,047 | baseline | - |
Note: The 2020, 2021, 2023 and 2024 figures are McDonald's own, reported in their SASB disclosures. We filled the 2022 gap by interpolation and projected 2025 and 2026 at 3% a year, giving roughly 1.22 million tonnes in 2026.
The standout jump is 2020 to 2021, a 21% rise in a single year. That is the pandemic rebound: 2020 was a year of closed dining rooms and lighter trade, and packaging volume snapped back as restaurants reopened and drive-thru and delivery orders, each one individually bagged, kept climbing.
What goes into McDonald's full waste total
Packaging is only one stream. Add the food and back-of-house waste McDonald's never report, and the total reaches the 2.7 million tonnes from the top of this page. Here is how it breaks down.
| Waste stream (2026, estimated) | Metric tonnes |
|---|---|
| Guest packaging and toys | 1.22 million |
| Food waste | 1.0 million |
| Used cooking oil and other operational waste | 0.45 million |
| Total | 2.7 million |
Note: Only the packaging line is McDonald's own figure. We estimate food waste at about 40 grams a meal across roughly 25 billion visits, and scale operational waste from their reported cooking-oil volumes.
A second method, treating packaging as about 45% of total restaurant waste by weight, lands at the same total. The likely range is 2.3 to 3.4 million tonnes.
Emissions are a separate matter. McDonald's report about 60 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, almost all from their supply chain, but that is greenhouse gas rather than physical waste, so it sits outside this total.
What is McDonald's?
McDonald's are the world's best-known fast-food chain, famous for their burgers, fries and the golden arches, and one of the largest restaurant companies on earth.
They began as a single drive-in that the McDonald brothers opened in California in 1940. The business most people know started in 1955, when salesman Ray Kroc opened a franchised branch and later bought the company, turning a burger stand into the template for fast food worldwide.
Almost all of their restaurants are run by franchisees rather than by the company itself, which is why McDonald's own revenue looks small next to the sales rung up across their restaurants.
A McDonald's restaurant at night. Almost all of McDonald's 43,477 outlets are run by franchisees, and each one serves food in single-use packaging.
- McDonald's ran 43,477 restaurants worldwide at the end of 2024, up from 41,822 a year earlier.
- About 95% of those restaurants are franchised, not company-owned.
- They operate in more than 100 countries.
- They serve around 70 million customers every day, by the company's own count.
- Restaurants generated $130.7 billion in systemwide sales in 2024, while McDonald's Corporation booked $25.9 billion in revenue, the gap being the franchise model.
- The company directly employs over 150,000 people, and the wider franchise system employs around 2 million.
Why does a burger generate so much waste?
The packaging total is large for reasons built into how McDonald's work, not one single cause.
- Everything is single-use. A meal arrives in a bag, with a wrapped burger, a fry carton, a lidded cup, a straw and napkins. Each item is used once and binned, so packaging tracks the number of orders almost one for one.
- 70 million orders a day. At that volume even a few grams per item add up fast. About 1.15 million tonnes in 2024 works out at roughly 45 grams of packaging per customer visit, a bag and a cup and a carton, multiplied across the year.
- More restaurants every year. McDonald's keep expanding, from 40,275 restaurants in 2022 to 43,477 in 2024, and packaging grows with the footprint.
- Drive-thru and delivery. Orders eaten off-site are bagged and sealed for travel, which adds packaging that a dine-in tray would not need. The shift toward delivery pushes the per-order weight up.
Packaging by the numbers
Spread across a year and a fleet of restaurants, the 2024 total turns into some striking per-unit figures.
| Packaging intensity | Figure |
|---|---|
| Packaging sourced per day | about 3,150 tonnes |
| Per customer visit | about 45 grams |
| Per restaurant each year | about 26 tonnes |
| Per $1m of systemwide sales | about 8.8 tonnes |
Note: Derived from McDonald's reported 1,148,893 tonnes in 2024, around 70 million daily customers, 43,477 restaurants and $130.7 billion in systemwide sales.
Discarded McDonald's packaging on the ground. Single-use bags, cartons and cups are built to be thrown away minutes after a meal, which is why the company turns up so often in litter surveys.
The goals McDonald's set for themselves
In 2018 McDonald's made a set of public promises about packaging, most of them due by the end of 2025. Here is where each one stood at the end of 2024, the most recent reported year.
| Goal | Where it stood |
|---|---|
| 100% of primary guest packaging from renewable, recycled or certified sources | 90.9% |
| Recycling offered in restaurants | 89.6% of restaurants in markets with advanced waste infrastructure |
| Happy Meal toys: cut virgin fossil-fuel plastic by about 90% vs 2018 | 80.3% reduction |
| Guest packaging free of intentionally added fluorinated compounds | 99.5% of items |
Note: Figures are McDonald's own, from their 2024-2025 sustainability disclosures, measured at the end of 2024 against 2025 goals. The recycling figure covers only the roughly 21 markets McDonald's class as having advanced waste infrastructure, not all restaurants worldwide.
On the headline packaging goal, McDonald's have told investors plainly that they will not get there, pointing to linings and lids on hot-food packaging that they cannot yet source from approved materials at scale.
The recycling promise has shifted too. The 2018 pledge was recycling in 100% of restaurants by 2025, and current reporting has narrowed that to a process aim measured only in the markets with the infrastructure to support it.
The Happy Meal toy pledge is the one moving fastest. McDonald's promised in 2021 to cut virgin fossil-fuel plastic in their toys by roughly 90% against a 2018 baseline by the end of 2025, and had reached an 80.3% cut by the end of 2024.
What about McDonald's food waste?
Here is the honest gap. McDonald's publish no figure for how much food they waste, and have set no target to reduce it. Our own estimate puts it around 1 million tonnes a year, the second-largest stream after packaging, but that figure is ours, not theirs.
The international sustainability standard McDonald's report against asks specifically for total waste, the share that is food, and the share sent to landfill. McDonald's answer that prompt with commentary about packaging and recycling, and give no food-waste tonnage at all.
| Food metric | What McDonald's report |
|---|---|
| Total food waste | not reported |
| Share of waste that is food | not reported |
| Food-waste reduction target | none set |
| Food donated (US, 2024) | over 1.1 million pounds |
Note: The standard McDonald's report against asks for total waste, the food share and the share sent to landfill. They answer only on packaging and donation.
What they do report is donation. In 2024 their US restaurants donated over 1.1 million pounds of food to food banks, and McDonald's UK works with surplus-food charity FareShare.
Those are useful numbers, but a donation figure is not a waste figure. Anyone wanting to know how much food McDonald's throw away will not find it in their reporting.
What McDonald's say about their packaging
McDonald's group their environmental work under a banner they call Scale for Good, the idea that small changes made across tens of thousands of restaurants add up.
On packaging they have switched many markets to fibre-based wrappers and cartons, removed plastic McFlurry lids in North America, rolled out wooden cutlery and stirrers, and report that 99% of their primary fibre-based packaging now comes from recycled or certified sources.
The progress is real but partial, and the most-cited example of the difficulty is the straw.
The paper straw that could not be recycled
In 2018 McDonald's replaced plastic straws with paper ones across their 1,361 UK and Ireland restaurants, presenting it as an environmental win.
A year later a leaked internal memo, first reported in 2019, told staff the new paper straws were not yet recyclable and should go in general waste. McDonald's confirmed they were too thick for their waste contractors to process. The plastic straws they replaced had been recyclable.
How others see it
McDonald's packaging is a fixture of street litter. In the United Kingdom, the Surfers Against Sewage litter audit sorts collected litter by brand, and McDonald's have placed among the worst four brands every year it has run, second in 2023 and third in 2025.
It is worth being precise about scale. McDonald's do not appear in the global Break Free From Plastic audits that name the world's biggest plastic polluters, which are dominated by drinks and consumer-goods firms like Coca-Cola.
Their footprint shows up instead in national litter surveys, where a recognisable bag or cup is easy to spot and count. McDonald's have also lobbied against European Union packaging rules that would push restaurants toward reusable and reduced packaging.
Frequently asked questions about McDonald's waste
Below are the questions people most often ask about McDonald's packaging and waste, answered with the company's own reported figures where they exist.
How much waste does McDonald's produce each year?
We estimate McDonald's produce around 2.7 million tonnes of total waste in 2026, counting packaging, food and operational waste. The only part they report themselves is guest packaging, about 1.22 million tonnes.
Does McDonald's report a single total-waste figure?
No. McDonald's report only the weight of guest packaging and toys they source, not food waste, kitchen waste or a combined total. Our 2.7 million tonne figure is an estimate that fills that gap.
Does McDonald's report their food waste?
No. McDonald's publish no food-waste tonnage and have set no food-waste reduction target, even though the standard they report against asks for exactly that. They report food donation volumes instead, which measure giving rather than waste.
Did McDonald's meet their 2025 packaging goals?
Not in full. By the end of 2024 they had reached 90.9% of their goal to source all primary guest packaging from renewable, recycled or certified materials, and have told investors they will miss the 100% target. Their toy-plastic goal stood at an 80.3% cut against a roughly 90% aim.
What kind of waste does McDonald's produce most of?
By the measure McDonald's report, fibre-based packaging dominates: paper bags, cups, wrappers and fry cartons. About 99% of that primary fibre packaging now comes from recycled or certified sources, though the plastic linings and lids on hot-food items remain the hardest part to change.
Is McDonald's packaging actually recycled?
Often not. McDonald's say about 89.6% of restaurants in markets with advanced waste infrastructure offer recycling or composting, but that covers only around 21 markets, not all restaurants worldwide. In much of their estate the packaging still goes to general waste sent to landfill.
How do we estimate McDonald's waste?
We start from McDonald's reported packaging, about 1.22 million tonnes in 2026, then estimate the food and operational waste they do not report, using quick-service food-waste rates and their cooking-oil volumes. Together that comes to about 2.7 million tonnes.
How does McDonald's packaging compare to their sales?
McDonald's restaurants made $130.7 billion in systemwide sales in 2024 while sourcing about 1.15 million tonnes of packaging, roughly 8.8 tonnes of packaging for every million dollars of sales. The ratio reflects a business where almost every item sold comes individually wrapped.
Images: Anthony92931, Alf van Beem
