Statement from Jon Banner, Global Chief Impact Officer and Warren Anderson, Global Chief Supply Chain Officer

McDonald’s has been built on consistency—food people trust, quality they can count on, and value that fits their day-to-day lives. Protecting that experience for the long-term means strengthening the resilience of our business, including how we, as a System (Company, Franchisees and Suppliers), care for our communities.

Over the past several years, we have focused on making measurable progress against our goals—especially in areas we can influence more directly. 

We’ve committed to staying transparent about what’s working and what we’ve learned. Here’s what that progress looks like:

• We are on track to exceed our Scope 1 and 2 2030 climate goals, driven largely by sustained investments in lower-carbon energy (1) and restaurant energy efficiency.
• We substantially achieved our Packaging, Toys and Waste commitments. (2) Packaging is one example of where customer experience and environmental impact meet. We have invested to reduce the use of virgin fossil fuel-based plastic for Happy Meal toys, expand the number of restaurants offering guests the opportunity to recycle, and increase the use of recycled, renewable and certified materials across our packaging.

We can’t control everything around us, but we can be clear about what McDonald’s stands for: serving great-tasting, affordable, quality food our customers love—today, and for years to come.

We’re assessing how we continue to deliver on that commitment to our customers, and what might challenge our ambition.

What this means for our 2030 climate target: While our System has shown incredible commitment, reducing our Scope 3 emissions—from franchised restaurants, suppliers, agriculture and land use, logistics, and the energy systems that power the world around us—is influenced by factors that extend well beyond any single company’s operations. Meaningful progress requires systemic change across industries, infrastructure and policy, and cannot rest on the actions of any one brand alone.

That means progress on Scope 3 emissions will be shaped not just by what McDonald’s does, but also by how quickly the world around us changes. In many regions, growth in energy demand is outpacing the current speed of clean energy deployment. (4) At the same time, global supply chains remain extremely fragile as they navigate long-lasting impacts of global events and geopolitical disruptions.

In response, we are prioritizing work that helps protect long-term supply, helps keep food affordable, and helps our System be more resilient. This includes improving energy efficiency, investing in renewable energy where it makes commercial sense and supporting supplier‑led solutions. An expected System investment of at least $1 billion over the next decade in supply chain resilience initiatives—especially at the farm level—will support regenerative agriculture, landscape-level solutions for key commodities, and programs that support farmers. 

We still maintain a long-term ambition: net zero emissions by 2050. We know this depends on many external variables—the changes required to reduce Scope 3 emissions are largely systemic and interconnected across the value chain. Given these realities, we face significant challenges, and at this point, we do not expect to reach our 2030 Scope 3 goal on the original timeline. 

What this means for packaging: Achieving 95.8 percent of our guest packaging sourcing goal is a big deal—and we’re proud of the work behind it. We’ve made significant investments to get to this point. However, much of the industry has not moved at the same pace and many global regulations still treat plastic packaging made with recycled or renewable content (5) the same as packaging made with virgin fossil fuel-based materials. 

We believe that policy frameworks that recognize the value of recycled and renewable content in plastic packaging (6) could help accelerate progress industry-wide. Without this, our continued investment in more sustainable packaging innovations and our franchisees’ ability to maintain affordable pricing for customers may be at risk. 

We’re proud of the progress we’ve made—and clear‑eyed about what may take longer than originally anticipated. We’ll continue working with our System, focusing on solutions that can scale, and being transparent about what’s delivering impact and where further progress depends on broader change.

1 Last year, we publicly reported our progress for Scope 1&2 as an approximate 55% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions as of 2024, from our 2018 baseline. Our Scope 3 emissions were reported as a 3% reduction from that same baseline, reflecting the systemic challenges discussed above. 

2 Substantially achieved = 95-99.9%

3 Non-structural components of packaging are out of scope. Some of the materials referenced above are sourced using a mass balance approach.  Mass balance allows certified, recycled, or renewable materials to be mixed with conventional materials during production, while tracking and verifying the total amount of material used across the supply chain via Chain of Custody certification.

4 Johns Hopkins University CSSE – (2025) U.S. energy supply chains are unlikely to meet anticipated demand | HubIEA (2025), Energy and AI, IEA, Paris https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-and-ai, Licence: CC BY 4.0

5 Particularly that are sourced through a mass ‑balance approach

6 Recycled content includes physically incorporated post‑consumer recycled content and mass ‑balance recycled content