In France, No More Plastic McDonald's Happy Meal Toys

McDonald’s is serious about fun. 

Since the first Happy Meal, 40 years ago, we’ve delighted in bringing smiles to our youngest customers by offering a toy with McDonald’s iconic children’s meal. 

So to sustain the fun, McDonald’s France this year introduced sustainable toys: offering more environmentally-friendly toys by removing all plastic toys from its Happy Meal menu as of February. 

It’s a big move for one of France’s major toy distributors and builds on the company’s continuous steps toward reducing hard-to-recycle plastic in guest packaging, including McDonald’s Happy Meal toys 

In 2014, McDonald’s France removed batteries from toys; in 2018, it developed new paper games such as coloring and trading cards; and in 2020, eliminated the plastic packaging around toys. Over the next three years, the company reduced the volume of plastic in its toys by more than 50%.*  

The "One Book or One Toy" program, available year-round and in all French restaurants, which allows families to choose a new book when they order, also significantly reduced plastic use since 2015. 

Today, the company offers toys made from renewable materials such as paper and cardboard in all its French restaurants. This new sustainable toy commitment is expected to save more than 3,000 metric tons of plastic per year.** 

Find out how we’re working globally to reduce our use of packaging, switch to more sustainable materials and help our customers reuse and recycle, too. 

* Estimated reductions in the volumes of plastics used in Happy Meal toys between 2017 and 2020. 

** Calculated based on estimated average annual volume of plastic used for Happy Meal toys between 2014 and 2020 and projected plastic reduction for these toys in 2021.