This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovich from Bloomberg Radio to Bloomberg Green, reporting last month that there is some thirty five trillion dollars invested in sustainability globally, Tim, not surprising now given the movement that we've seen from investors and from companies that want to make sure, hey, this is where our
clientele is going. Yeah, And speaking of companies that are focusing on sustainability, that includes McDonald's and McDonald's Corporations Chief sustainability officer Jenny McCulloch joining us on the phone in Chicago. Jenny, great to have you here with Tim and myself. How are you hi, Carol, Hi, Tim, It's great to be here. Thanks for having me on the show today. Well, tell us about your latest announcement when it comes to we've been talking a little bit about happy Meals. You guys
have made um a sustainable move when it comes to them. Absolutely, we've got a lot underway here and sustainability on our food and on our restaurants and communities. But today it's all about points and the special fund that the Happy Meal experience brings to families around the world. We announced today that by the end of will be drastically reducing plastics across our Happy Maal toys around the world and transitioning to more sustainable materials. So we're really excited about
this news and look forward to talking about that. So it's it's a few years off. Why does it take so long to make a transition like that, Well, when we think about the scale of McDonald's, were operating in nearly forty thousand communities and over a hundred countries around
the world. So when we think about innovation, we have to you know, really lean with our suppire partners on markets that are really willing to test and lead and take those first steps, and then think about what we can learn from our customers and families and what we
can scale later. So what we're doing here is building on some really great momentum that we've seen in France, the UK and Ireland where these more sustainable toys have been being rolled out since and we're working on roadmap to scale those to other markets around the world and we may even see some of those in the portfolio
as soon as it's winter or the US. I think it's so cool, Jenny, I do what I love talking about companies like you, really big companies who can move the needle on things, especially when it comes to the supply chain. Is that part of the problem that it's going to Tim's point, I'm always like, why can't we just do it now? Why can't we do it in a year and a half or two years? Is it because the existing infrastructure, supply chains, what have you, they
just don't quite exist yet. Well, I would say that when we think about innovation at scale, we do need to try different things and and get feedback from customers and kids about what works and what doesn't. So part of that is is just a typical sort of prototype feedback cycles that you'd expect. Um. When we also think about the happy male experience, we are so focused on the safety and sturdiness of those experiences for the toys because we know that that safety is such an important
part of the happy male experience for our families. So we want to be very mindful as we make changes to the design of the toy. But that being said, you know, we have the privilege to work with some of the world class piers around the world in this area and have amazing designers, scientists, engineers, toy innovators, play experts, all thinking about where we can make changes and and we have seen some really exciting ideas that can be scaled.
And so when we think about, you know, the commercial design of a toy from start to finish, it does take quite a while anyway, and so to make these changes is just part of that longer term innovation process for us. So what are what's an example of a sustainable toy or a more sustainable toy. What's it made out of and what does it look like? Sure, so the materials when we think about what we're considering more sustainable materials as part of the goal, is anything that's
made from renewable, recycled, or certified materials. So that could be certified sustainable fiber, such as in a puzzle or you know, build it yourself dinosaur craft construction project um or it could be from recycled plastic or plant based plastic that you might see from sugarcane or or soybean that gets mixed and derived into more rigid, hard plastic toys.
So some of the toys that our customers are enjoying today might be made from plants in the future and they may not even know the difference in the actual soy experience. Um, but we we are looking at sort of both those changes to the toy design as well as reimagining of classic favorites that just use more innovative materials. Plant based is making us think about the food that
you guys sak exactly. Yeah, that's that's exactly what I think about, Jenny, when I when I hear about sustainability and think about beef and meat, my mind doesn't necessarily go to toys and plastic toys. It goes to the impact that cattle have on the environment, from methane to deforestation. And I'm wondering, as chief sustainability officer at McDonald's, how
you think about those challenges. Well, we think about those challenges very much in concert with what where we have responsibilities across all of our our offerings for our customers, and we've been on a journey with our food sourcing and our packaging sourcing or over a decade looking at our sourcing regions where we can promote more sustainable practices with our supplier partners, and you touched on it with
the comments around beef. We have prioritized work on the sustainability with supply chain partners and NGOs and farmers and
ranchers for many, many years. We just wrapped up a series of commitments leading into where we'd really worked with the industry to articulate a vision for what more sustainable beef production could mean, how we could eliminate deforestation and high risk regions for beef sourcing and other commodities as well, and also how we can promote and support best practices among farmers who are really pioneering more innovative regenerative practices
on their farms and ranches and help support scaling those
practices across the industry with our supplier partners. So while the announcement today is it's very much around toys and the fun of the happy meal, we've we've been at at work for quite some time looking at the sustainability of the food and this is just, you know, one more our step in a long line of commitments that we continue to work on and we'll keep working on if we look for well, really cool to check in with you, Jenny, and I hope we can get you back.
Jenny McCulloch, she's chief sustainability officer at McDonald's joining us on the phone from Chicago. I mean you've got to approach it from like a lot of different angles. Yeah. Never, I didn't even consider the happy Not really. No, I didn't either, um right, because we don't focus on it. But they sell a lot of them, and if you think about it, that makes sense. Kids will know no, no, exactly. All right, you're listening to Boomberg Radio.