Burger King has announced that it will stop handing out plastic toys in its children's meals and said that it is launching an amnesty for customers to return any freebies in a bid to tackle the growing problem of plastic waste.
The action at its restaurants across Britain will save an estimated 320 tonnes of single use plastic every year, the fast food giant said.
Larger rival McDonald's Corp announced on September 18 that some of its restaurants in Britain and Ireland would allow customers to swap toys in happy meals for a fruit bag from October and that it planned to introduce books as an option from early next year.
Burger King said that it had been galvanised by Southampton sisters Ella and Caitlin McEwan's Change.org petition calling on Burger King and McDonald's to stop giving plastic toys with their kids' meals for the sake of the environment.
One Strand Of A Wider Strategy
The chief executive of Burger King UK, Alasdair Murdoch, said that the plastic toy initiative was one strand of a wider strategy to reduce packaging.
"What we are really focussed on is removing single-use plastics, and that's why we've done that with the toys," Murdoch said.
Burger King, a unit of Canada's Restaurant Brands International, said that at its UK stores it is also installing amnesty bins that will accept donations of plastic toys that are given away free by either competitors, magazines or in cereal boxes.
These items would then be given a "new purpose" and transformed into play areas for selected stores and special trays encouraging play across restaurants.
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