I gave the article below (from the BBC website) to my Yr 12
class and asked them what they could work out.
They had some great ideas (which are shown below the article), largely because
we have been working on this sort of thing throughout the year. If you wanted to use this with a class that
isn’t used to working in this way then the ideas my class came up with could be
turned into questions to ask.
McDonald's plastic straw petition: Call to ditch paper straws
24 April 2019
McDonald's is being called on to stop its roll out of paper straws in the UK and Ireland, amid claims that they "dissolve" in drinks.
The fast food giant is switching from plastic to paper straws at their 1,361 restaurants after customer pressure. An online petition calling for a return to plastic straws has so far garnered more than 35,000 signatures.
McDonald's say they are "doing the right thing" while a supplier said customers need to "compromise". The restaurant chain supplies 1.8 million straws to its four million UK customers each day.
Things my class worked out:
- 35,000 people have signed the petition. That’s less than 1% of the people who visit McDonald’s in one day.
- About 6% of the population of the country go to McDonald’s each day.
- On average each restaurant uses 1323 straws per day. [We talked about rounding this off more appropriately – and decided that 1300 is probably better.]
- Just under half (45%) of customers use a straw. This might be because some people don’t have a drink, or have a hot drink, or have juice without a straw.
- There are 1.46 billion visits to McDonald’s in the UK and Ireland each year. [Better as 1.5 billion?] We know this can’t be 1.5 billion different people because that would be about a fifth of the population of the planet! On average, that’s 22 visits per year per person, which is equivalent to about two visits per month. Maybe half the population go once a week and the other half never go?
- A straw weighs about 0.42g. That means 756kg of straws per day. Over the course of a year that’s the weight of 3600 adults.
