Credit: Fair Resource Foundation
The Fair Resource Foundation alleges that McDonald’s Netherlands is violating the law by serving single-use cups on-site and charging reuse fees – all while generating negative publicity around reuse as a whole.
In January 2024, the Netherlands sought to comply with European legislation by requiring all hospitality establishments to serve any food and drinks for on-site consumption in reusable packaging. The only alternative is packaging made from high-quality recycled and recyclable PET.
However, the Foundation claims that McDonald’s has been packaging its beverages and McFlurry ice creams in single-use cardboard cups with plastic coatings since the summer of 2024. The fast food giant is also accused of charging a €0.15 surcharge per cup.
“As a result,” the Foundation explains, “the country’s largest fast-food chain is not only non-compliant and wasting resources, but is even making customers pay extra by charging a fee for these single-use cups.”
Therefore, it is argued that the “largest fast-food chain in the Netherlands” is “making extra money on the back of its customers by creating a revenue model around prohibited single-use packaging.”
The Foundation continues to assert that McDonald’s is “deliberately letting its own reuse system fail” – pointing to reported lobbying against reusable packaging, as well as interviews and sponsored media believed to encourage a negative view on reuse.
An impact report also suggests that reusable cups from McDonald’s Netherlands are only reused 3.3 times on average. The Foundation compares this finding to McDonald’s France, which has reportedly achieved an average of 33.9 on-site reuse cycles.
The Dutch outcome is blamed on various factors, including the provision of single-use cups via self-service; the visual similarities between the single-use and reusable cups; the chain’s failure to charge a deposit on reusable dine-in cups, or provide another incentive for reuse; and unclear communication about reuse, such as how and where cups should be returned.
“Although certain aspects of the system are well-designed by McDonald’s (quick deposit refunds at the counter and reasonably clear return stations), it is not enough to achieve desired return rates,” the Foundation says.
“Replacing single-use plastic – or reusable – with single-use paper (with plastic coating) ignores the enormous problems arising from increasing demand for paper. Three billion trees are cut down annually, forests in Estonia and Finland have become net CO2 emitters, and forest fires and biodiversity loss are increasing.”
It also cites reports from the Rethink Plastic Alliance and Eunomia in its assertion that the resource extraction, production, use, and disposal of single-use packaging has a greater environmental impact than “well-designed” reuse systems.
The Foundation fears that McDonald’s Netherlands is “undermining forward-thinking, innovative Dutch reuse companies” by “deliberately designing a poor reuse system and then blaming the concept of reuse itself”. On 26th November 2025, it submitted an enforcement request to the Dutch authorities.
“We call on McDonald’s to take responsibility and respect the law, stop resisting, and stop charging customers for prohibited single-use packaging,” it adds. “As a market leader, McDonald’s sets the direction for the market.
“The company proudly claims “schaalgrootte in om een positieve impact te maken”, to use its scale to make a positive impact. We can only welcome that on the path toward reusable packaging.”
This development comes after McDonald’s Japan sparked conversation by replacing its paper straws with ‘strawless’ rPET lids. Together with other packaging adjustments, the move is intended to save 6,600 tons of virgin plastic every year; but some consumers have expressed their desire to keep plastic straws available as an option, citing their performance and convenience.
In other news, we recently published a deep dive into findings published by Mieke van den Berg from The LCA Centre and Roland ten Klooster from the University of Twente, which compared the environmental factors of single-use packaging to reusable alternatives in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies.
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