McDonald’s Corp on Wednesday became the latest big company in Britain to say that the last straw has come for plastic — with plans to start using drinking straws made from paper.
The move comes after estimates that 8.5 billion straws are used in Britain every year — or more than 23 million a day — which is contributing to the death of marine animals, according to the Marine Conservation Society.
The fast-food giant joins a list of nightclubs and restaurant venues — including Pizza Express, pub chain Wetherspoons, and supermarket Waitrose — which have pledged to exchange plastic straws for bio-degradable alternatives.
“The reduction and use of plastics is a hugely important issue — for our business, for the sector and for society,” McDonald’s UK chief executive Paul Pomroy said in a statement.
McDonald’s currently only uses recyclable straws, but would pilot paper straws in some restaurants starting in May and keep them behind the counter, giving customers the choice of whether to have a straw, he said.
The widening ban on plastic straws comes as UN statistics show that 8 million tonnes of plastic — bottles, food packaging and other waste — enter the ocean each year, killing marine life and entering the human food chain.
Scientists have urged tougher restrictions on plastic waste.
About 200 nations in December last year agreed to limit plastic pollution of the oceans, warning it could outweigh fish by 2030.
The Marine Conservation Society said about 70 percent of litter on beaches was made of plastic with items such as straws, cups and stirrers making up more than 20 percent of the litter.
“We really want to see all plastic straws being removed from all the fast-food chains... Customers clearly do not choose to recycle convenience packaging,” Marine Conservation Society campaign officer Emma Cunningham said in a statement.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained