McDonald's Scraps Worldwide Composting Program Because Food Won't Decompose: Grist Exclusive

McDonald's announced this morning that it is scrapping plans for a worldwide composting initiative, Grist reported. Their decision to halt the program came after scientists at the University of California-Berkeley discovered that nothing on the McDonald's menu was compostable.

Grist also reported that you've just been APRIL FOOLED, SUCKAS.

While Grist's prank is all in good fun, there's still a thread of truth in it-- last month, nutritionist Joann Bruso revealed that she'd kept a Happy Meal on her shelf for one year, only to find that it hadn't decomposed in that all that time.

Read the full, marvelous prank at Grist.org.

Comments

[Weirdwriter]

12:50 AM on 04/06/2010

As Michael Pollan warns, "Real food rots."

[Samuel Perry]

05:35 PM on 04/05/2010

For about one second I was about to get physically ill. Then it was just back to being plain ole mental. Thanks HP for an awesome April Fools joke, or something..

[talidapali]

02:39 PM on 04/02/2010

Being a vegetarian like I am sounds more and more appealing to me every day. And I get to drive right by all the fast food places and save a bunch of cash.

[klbrz]

11:29 AM on 04/02/2010

I realize McDonald's food is full of preservatives, and, at the risk of appearing to be defending McD's, I basically have to say I think the blogger who says she had it on her shelf for a year is lying. "Flies and other insects just ignored the Happy Meal" - she must have the pickiest insects on the planet around her home. I've seen fries in parking lots covered with flies and being fought over by birds. Around our house, we have had hot dog and hamburger buns from the store that are essentially the same as a McD's bun, covered in mold in just a few days. Even keeping the heat and ac going constantly to keep the air super dry, I don't believe they were on her shelf for anywhere near a year.

I would bet that the stuff can be composted, the question would just be whether or not you want the preservatives and other stuff to end up in your compost. I'm thinking not.

[KIVPossum]

07:53 AM on 04/06/2010

Agreed. Put a Big Mac out in the open and see how flies and ants flock to it. McD buns are made by the same bakery that makes your grocery store bread, and delivered daily. It will spoil at the exact same rate as any white bread you buy. The stuff is crap, but it does rot. The blogger who posted it was just trying to stir something up.

[MJinCanada]

10:48 AM on 04/02/2010

I was hoping the composting would be for the packaging, buns and left-over salads at least -- I know the fries won't decompose.

[RyanCSmith]

07:27 PM on 04/01/2010

Got me! Is it a prank when its something that's believable?

[Nate the Heretic]

06:26 PM on 04/01/2010

Ha ha...gross.

[drumz]

04:58 PM on 04/01/2010

Fooled me until I realized that you can't compost meat. And we all know McD's uses 100% USDA meat wink, wink.

[ShakeYourComplacency]

04:43 PM on 04/01/2010

Well, it's not an april fools joke because they admitted that the lady kept a burger for 1 year and it didn't rot.

I've long maintained that mcdonalds is not food. Theoretically, it should be nutritious, even if the ingredients are pedestrian. But the "beef"? I don't know what it is. And the chicken is not any better.

I haven't been to mcdonalds in ages, but I went this morning because I went home sick, and wanted to stop to get an egg sandwich so I'd have something in my stomach before I went home to sleep. (I remember their breakfast being edible). They had a new sandwich on the menu called "steak and egg." So I ordered it. Huge mistake. The minute the bag was handed to me it was overwhelming with that stench which is unique to mcdonalds and burger king. I opened it, and basically it was a hamburger with a square size egg product thrown on. There was no steak or anything close to it. The beef wouldn't even pass for burger meat. The bagel was greasy and basically the entire sandwich was inedible. I just went home.

[poster1122]

06:51 PM on 04/01/2010

From the one year article:

'If flies ignore a Happy Meal and microbes don't decompose it, then your child's body can't properly metabolise it either."

And she's a nutritionist?

First off, the likeliest explanation is salt, which is known to be quite a good preservative because it binds to the water in the food. Bacteria need enough "free" water in order to thrive. That combined with the arid atmosphere makes things quite inhospitable for bacterial growth.

Honestly, what do people think that people did in the thousands of years before the advent of refrigeration? Sailors had to go to sea carrying provisions for months at a time between restocking. And it's not like people from thousands of years ago could afford to slaughter an animal each day and just throw away what couldn't be consumed.

Go ahead. Salt any piece of meat (particularly cooked meat) and leave it in a cabinet in a relatively dry place. You can see for yourself how drastically decomposition is slowed down.

[MJinCanada]

10:38 AM on 04/02/2010

There is a difference between dehydrated, smoked and salted meats and a supposedly fresh burger. Even well-smoked meat or salted meat has a shelf life. For thousands of years it was typical to kill the excess animals in the fall, when the smoked and salted meat would also benefit from the natural refrigeration of winter. But actually people either ate very little meat or did hunt or butcher quite frequently. Remember, too, that people lived in larger households that could quickly consume a couple of chickens, or villages where a pig could be divvied up with little waste.

Did Stone Age people and Native Americans waste meat? Yes, sometimes they did.

And provisions on ships didn't keep well for months -- they were rotten and filled with weevils after just a few weeks.

[MJinCanada]

10:50 AM on 04/02/2010

I know what you mean about the stench. My kids very rarely go to McDonald's, but if they do, the garbage has to go in a bin outside immediately. I won't have it in the house.

[BMcCue7]

04:33 PM on 04/01/2010

Fooled me!

[ReedYoung]

05:09 PM on 04/01/2010

Me too! It's not hard to believe.

[rollingrock]

03:29 PM on 04/01/2010

Formaldehyde! ...its whats for dinner.

[Javaline]

10:35 AM on 04/05/2010

Good one! It's not a shelf life, it's a half-life!

[Danielck62]

03:20 PM on 04/01/2010

"Joann Bruso revealed that she'd kept a Happy Meal on her shelf for one year, only to find that it hadn't decomposed in that all that time."

Truth can be stranger than fiction!

[research]

03:15 PM on 04/01/2010

LOL!

But seriously, they should Bio Char it.

see my profile for details and links.

with bio char, they can get energy, fuel and fertilizer, carbon negative.

[paliuli]

03:32 PM on 04/01/2010

Yay, another voice for Biochar, the thing that can totally transform the world!

[Whatevah]

02:57 PM on 04/01/2010

Ha ha ha ha ha!

I admit that you fooled me. My heart sank when I read this.

The reality is that certain types of food - especially meats and oils - are especially hard to compost. It can be done, obviously, but it does require a certain amount of skill and dedication.

For this reason, most folks should put meat and oils down the garbage disposal. Plant-based materials are much, MUCH easier to compost.

I know of only one exception. Egg shells compost nicely. Otherwise, avoid anything with animal fats unless you have access to a VERY sophisticated composting facility.

[JohnMcGurk]

02:45 PM on 04/01/2010

Only a year? This was already done by a woman who has kept a hamburger since 1996.

http://bestofmotherearth.com/2008/09/24/1996-mcdonalds-hamburger.html