McDonald’s Portugal recycles 18,000 uniforms and helps 5,500 families
The Ronald McDonald Children’s Foundation is distributing comfort and hygiene kits to parents whose children are hospitalized. The kits are packed in 5,500 bags, which were recycled from old uniforms donated by McDonald’s Portugal.
In six months, 18,000 old uniforms belonging to employees of one of the world’s largest chains of fast food restaurants were reduced to recycled fiber, the backdrop for a solidarity project.
“We were not prepared for such large projects. The coats were divided to one side and the polo shirts to the other. They were repackaged, then the fasteners and buttons were opened and selected and removed and inclined to be packaged. We defined a mixture to go into the recycling machine”, explains João Valério, administrator of Recutex, the factory responsible for textile transformation.
20 tons of clothing were recycled, resulting in 5,500 bags that were given color with environmentally friendly inks. Volunteers from the Ronald Mcdonald Children’s Foundation filled the bags with some comfort for parents accompanying their hospitalized children.
The solidarity project, which began last year, now has an environmental component.
“We had 18,000 old uniforms that we would like to give a correct and useful end of life. Therefore, why not a circular economy project combined with an impact on the community”, says Marta Amaro, responsible for the communication department at McDonald’s.
The initiative was to last three months but the response was “positive”, which led to the project being extended.