Greening Fast Food Packaging: A Roadmap to Best Practices

Today, Dogwood Alliance released “Greening Fast Food Packaging: A Roadmap to Best Practices,” which outlines eight key attributes of environmentally friendly fast food packaging, and provides simple guidance on how to assess environmental impacts in the supply chain. The report highlights leaders in the fast food industry that have undertaken key initiatives that will help move the entire sector forward. Also included is a valuable action plan to focus corporate sustainability efforts.

The Dogwood Alliance's eight step to making packaging more environmentally friendly include:

1. Embrace corporate leadership on sustainability: Adopt an environmental packaging policy and get buy-in from leadership.
2. Use a full life cycle and supply chain approach: Determine the complete scope of impacts from packaging along the entire supply chain.
3. Reduce overall packaging and increase efficiency: Minimize packaging, make it lighter.
4. Increase use of recycled fiber
5. Eliminate paper from controversial forestry practices (with this step, Dogwood Alliance wades into the ongoing debate on sustainable forestry, urging companies should use only paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council and avoid paper certified by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative.)
6. Increase in-store recycling and recovery: Provide recycling within restaurants and encourage recycling when customers take packaging away.
7. Eliminate toxic inks and labels.
8. Reduce carbon footprint: Make transportation more efficient through better shipping setups and fuel-efficient vehicles.