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Queen Creek Store Manager Alicia Morain Provides Coffee Grounds To Simonton Garden Coordinator Sherri Crosslin.
Arizona McDonald’s is announcing the launch of “McCafé School Gardens Grow!,” a coffee grounds recycling initiative. McDonald’s restaurants are partnering with schools statewide to recycle their used coffee grounds and help school gardens grow. Kathyrn Sue Simonton and Ranch Elementary schools are participating in the program and are picking up coffee grounds weekly from Queen Creek McDonald’s restaurants. The restaurants are also making the coffee grounds available daily to the Queen Creek community for local gardens and composts.
The new initiative is part of McDonald’s “Good Neighbor Good Grounds” recycling program, designed to divert used coffee grounds from the waste stream by promoting the reuse of coffee grounds to add nutrients to soil or compost.
According to Queen Creek McDonald’s owner Catherine Sanchez, 130 schools with the Arizona Department of Education School Garden Program have already signed up and are currently utilizing their local McDonald’s coffee grounds in their gardens and composts.
“Kathyrn Sue Simonton Elementary is excited to be a part of McDonald’s coffee grounds recycling program to help our garden grow,” said Sherri Crosslin, Kathryn Sue Simonton garden coordinator. “Community partnerships like this are so important and I look forward to teaching my students the importance of recycling and reducing waste.”
Sanchez stated that Arizona restaurants participating in the school garden coffee grounds recycling program expect to divert thousands of pounds of waste from going into the waste stream. According to a recent waste assessment audit by Waste Management, a McDonald’s restaurant has 29.5 lbs. of coffee grounds waste each day or 11,000 lbs. a year.
“Our McDonald’s restaurants serve a lot of coffee,” said Sanchez. “The opportunity to partner with schools in our communities to reduce our coffee grounds waste is a win for everyone. We hope to expand this program this Spring and make our coffee grounds available daily to the community for local gardens and composts. Concern for the environment is important to us as well as our customers. We practice responsible coffee sourcing. The majority of our certified coffee purchases are from Rainforest Alliance Certified™ farms, including 100% of our espresso in the U.S.
Our restaurants work hard to reuse, reduce and recycle,” she continued. “We also currently recycle used cooking oil in nearly all of our restaurants. Our napkins are made out of 100% recycled content and we are the first in the industry to have the “How2Recycle” label on many of our recyclable packages, bags and clear cups. We’ve also set a time-bound goal to achieve 100% of our packaging from certified or recycled sources by the year 2020.”
Schools or community gardens interested in participating in the coffee grounds recycling program can call Rhonda Grundemann at 602-739-8810 to be assigned to a local McDonald’s restaurant.
About McDonald’s of Arizona
The 300 Arizona McDonald’s restaurants employ more than 15,000* people and annually feed $329.5 million into the Arizona economy. We make good food that is served fast, with a focus on responsible sourcing. Our McDonald’s supply chain includes suppliers of all sizes including family-owned farms and ranches in Arizona. In 2014, McDonald’s spent more than $49.7 million on locally sourced food, purchasing 28.9 million pounds of lettuce, 8.2 million pounds of flour and 16.6 million pounds of beef.
*McDonald’s and McDonald’s independently owned and operated franchisees are equal opportunity employers committed to a diverse and inclusive workforce. McDonald’s and each of McDonald’s independently owned and operated franchisees are the exclusive employer of their employees and as such are solely responsible for all employment related matters in their restaurants.
About McDonald’s
McDonald’s USA, LLC, serves a variety of menu options made with quality ingredients to more than 27 million customers every day. Nearly 90 percent of McDonald’s 14,000 U.S. restaurants are independently owned and operated by businessmen and women. Customers can now log online for free at approximately 11,500 participating Wi-Fi enabled McDonald’s U.S. restaurants. For more information, visit www.mcdonalds.com, or follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
There are news or informational items frequently written by staff or submitted to the Copper Basin News, San Manuel Miner, Superior Sun, Pinal Nugget or Oracle Towne Crier for inclusion in our print or digital products. These items are not credited with an author.
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