Material Flows Project/Presentation

The Hidden Costs of McDonalds

For our second project in our sustainable systems class, we had to come up with a project that investigates a problem with a product or company that has a negative environmental impact in terms of climate change or sustainability, and resolve the issue by creating an awareness campaign and a product that resolves the issues of the original in terms of changing the system to a more sustainable and positive concept.

First off, we started by exercises that helped us learn about mapping the relationship between the consumers and the products, and how different approaches can change the way people interact with a product or organization in terms of sustainability. We used methods such as the Okala Ecological Guide, User Journey mappings, Leverage Points and Systems Maps to help us brainstorm what problem we wanted to target and the pros and cons of the organization/product.

For me, I was always interested in the meat industry from watching documentaries such as “Forks over Knives” or “Cowspiracy”, which highlights the issues that the meat industry causes in terms of the environment. I wanted my awareness campaign to address this issue that looks upon the concerns of global warming, water use, meat consumption and animal agriculture, and my first thought was “McDonalds”. I additionally wanted to talk about their packaging and how that contributes to pollution, and the solution to the issue.

McDonalds has a long history of being known for their food industry being unsustainable, and with many reliable resources available (documentaries, news posts, websites), I was able to gather as much information as possible with what I wanted to tackle in my campaign about the hidden costs in their meat industry and packaging in terms of unsustainability.

My initial idea for my campaign was a McDonalds drive thru, with the customer ordering what they wanted from the menu, the worker giving the food informs the customer about the gruesome truth behind the meat industry and the unsustainably of their packaging and a drive thru in general. I was very confident in the idea from all the information I had and the research I had done, and was proceeding to the presentation section of the campaign. However, I then realized it would be hard to find a creative way to present the drive thru awareness, since in New York it would be difficult to find one, and trying to search for a clear video of a McDonalds drive thru process online was impossible.

I struggled to find a solution for this, as I was stuck with the idea of the drive thru and thought that if I changed my idea, I would have to do my research all over again. Fortunately, very soon I discovered that McDonalds introduced a new touch screen menu in all of their fast food chains in the city, and the idea hit me. I would present a new touch screen menu that contains a hacking device, and instead of showing the sugarcoated typical food menu with the nutritional information, it would display the hidden costs of a simple burger a consumer orders, as well as the impact of the packaging.

In terms of creating our presentation, we were given a helpful guide to what we needed to include in our awareness campaign. I had to discuss:

• The problem (which was the truth behind how McDonalds’s products (and packaging) is unsustainable and hidden costs of the hamburger, packaging – how much waste it generates etc.)
• What my project was (a scenario about where people discover the truth and sustainability issues behind the McDonalds company by the hacked touched screen menu)
• Who our audience was (people who regularly eat at the McDonalds fast food chain and obtain a quick paced lifestyle, prefer quick meals)
• Argument for the solution (information and research about why I chose this approach,
• Explain what products I developed (the hacking device which hacks through all the touch bar menus in McDonalds and presents the factual information and statistics regarding their unsustainability)
• Show a systems map (which explains what changes after the impact at McDonalds)

Information/script for each slide:

SUSTAINABLE MCD INFORMATION SLIDE-2j8r3by

For the presentation, I decided to create it with the program I know best, powerpoint. It gave me an opportunity to use and present useful graphics and display my information as clearly as possible. I tried to be as informative as possible, with more visuals than text, and show my research and investigation with the above criteria included as best as I could. I wrote a script of each slide so I could memorize and remember each part of my information when presenting each slide, and by the end I was very happy with the way it turned out.

Here you can access the pdf file of my presentation:

Sustainable S McDonalds project-1pghdey