Burger King in the UK is no longer going to sell kids toys

general topics
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McDonalds in the UK is considering making a similar move also

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Oh FFS. You don’t solve environmental collapse facilitated by companies that only exist in the first place by exploiting it taking away kids’ shitty cracker-jack prizes. You solve environmental collapse through comprehensive national and international regulation and incentivization aimed at industries-wide sustainability, renewable energy and resources, and product cradle-to-grave recycling infrastructure. These goddamn corporations and their PR departments need to get bent and the the public needs to stop falling for this fatuous bullshit.

Gods I hate late-stage capitalism.

ETA: sigh…(deep breath)

Sorry I’m in a foul mood. Maybe on some level someone thought this was going to do real good. I’m just beyond sick and tired of the underlying free-market fundamentalism that says this is how we fix the greatest existential threat to life on Earth in our and possibly its history.

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I agree that getting rid of a small amount of plastic garbage won’t prevent “environmental collapse”. You’re right not to give them disproportionate credit for it, but I also like when awful people stop being as awful.

The more pressure they put on each other to look like “good corporate citizens” even if it’s cynically done, reduces plastic across a really bad industry for loose plastic litter. Other industries are worse, and need to do more too.

(Those toys in particular are barely toys anyway, usually just a piece of plastic with a corporate sticker on it. There’s more cynicism in their production, I think.)

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Blame this:

TL-DR (note: kid’s toys is not what the series is about, it’s just the headline friendliest bit):

  • People in the UK produce a lot of plastic (duh!).

  • Most of it ends up overseas where people who don’t really want to deal with it (and simply don’t have the resources to deal with it) end up not dealing with it.

  • A surprisingly large (and handily easily identifiable) amount of that plastic is the little free giveaway toys in kid’s meals.

  • Which it turns out - the kids don’t actually care about. They get the meal - the toys go straight in the bin.

  • Parents don’t like them, the kids don’t like them, the company gets to claim it is doing a good thing and not incidentally reduce its costs.

The series is worth watching if only to depress oneself about the scale of the problem.

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