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Politicians don't often mention the fast food industry when they debate climate change questions. But they should. This article will tell you why.

But before we go into details:

Table of Contents

Why is fast food such a huge environmental issue?
Fast food is the concept of serving low-quality meat at an affordable price. These multinational companies buy their beef from companies that are chopping down the rainforest and using an extreme amount of water to produce your hamburger. In addition to that, fast food chains are actively working towards "world domination" by bringing their restaurants to other parts of the world. When you combine all these elements with several marketing campaigns towards children, you start to see a very dangerous pattern.
People eat more and more fast food - and it literally destroys the environment & our health.

Now, let's dig a bit deeper into the facts...

1. Meat Becomes Too Affordable

Needless to say, most of the products sold in fast food restaurants contain meat. In the USA alone, McDonald's sells more than 1 billion pounds (!!!!!!!) of beef every year.

If you add all the ham from Subway, chicken from KFC and pork meat from Taco Bell, you will find a number that is quite depressing.

The reason why people buy meat products from fast food restaurants is simply that its cheap. Economies of scale allow these huge corporations to produce an awful lot of meat to a very low cost. Combined with the fact that they fill all kinds of disgusting things in their meat products, they are able to offer fast food at a very affordable price.

A great example of this madness it the burger market in the USA. Did you know that it costs more to buy an "Impossible Burger" (vegan) than a beef burger in the same restaurant?
In other words: you get punished for trying to save the world. Madness.
2. Child Education - "Mommy, can we go to McDonald's tonight?!"

Ronald McDonald and all of those other marketing efforts aimed towards children should be forbidden. A big part of the infamous documentary " SuperSize Me " was dedicated to showing how fast food chains deliberately try to recruit small kids.

Countless studies have concluded that someone's eating pattern as an adult is heavily connected to what that person ate as a kid.

Right now we are in the process of creating an army of people that have been used to eating sugar-filled, nasty burgers from the day they turned 3 years old.... that doesn't sound very sustainable, does it?
How can you teach your kids to reduce their carbon footprint? Learn more.
Compilation of Junk Food Adverts Aimed Towards Children [Youtube Video]

3. Animals and Trees in the Amazon Rainforest: WATCH OUT!

The very first time I heard about fast food chains chopping down the Amazon rainforest I got some weird pictures in my head. Being 13 years old at the time, I actually pictured big bulldozers with a McDonald's logo on them going from tree to tree - and running over tigers on their way.
After reading a book about this specific topic, I found out that it´s not exactly how things work....
However, we do know that local farmers are chopping down the rainforest in poor countries in order to make cattle farms. Once they have produced their meat, they sell that meat to companies like Burger King and McDonald's.

4. Lazy Lifestyle: More Driving, Less Biking
Ok, I admit that this one might be a bit far out. However, the fatter people get, the less tempted they will be to ride a bike.
Sorry to point out one single country, but just look at the " best country in the world": United States of America. This is a country where people are fat - and where people drive a lot of cars.

One particular study was conducted to map out the link between obesity and car driving. After looking at obesity rates and willingness to choose a car over any other transportation method, this is their conclusion:
"It stands to reason that the less you bike or walk, the more you drive. And the more you drive, the less exercise you get from the aforementioned activities."
If you want to read an article about the study (external link, fastcompany.com), feel free to click here.

5. Fast Food Chains Decide What "Western Food" is in Asia/South America

After living in China for five years, I quickly understood that Chinese people divide food into two categories:

When I started to dig a bit deeper and tried to find out what they actually meant by "western food", I was quite shocked. KFC, McDonald's, Starbucks, Taco Bell, and the other fast food chains are, unfortunately, the first thing a Chinese person will think of when they describe food from Europe/USA.

So when Chinese people go out to enjoy some delicious food from other parts of the world, they end up at some of these trashy fast food restaurants. Destroying their own health - and destroying the planet.
Fun fact: As of 2019, there are about 2200 McDonald's restaurants across China. They plan to double that number by the year 2022.
6. Municipal Waste (Packaging)

The day I wrote this article, I actually went down to McDonald's for lunch. I got some semi-decent food, but I am more interested in telling you about the packaging that I got:

- A huge paper bag
- Five (!!) tissues, which is totally unnecessary.
- Surrounding my chicken legs, another small paper bag.
- My French fries came in some sort of a cardboard box.
- My diet coke was served with a plastic straw.
In other words: everything was wrong.
Not only does fast-food packaging count for about 10 % of all waste being produced, but CNN also recently published an article stating that about one-third of all the packaging contains harmful chemicals. Yuuuuuke!
And just for the record, this is a close-up picture of my Big Mac burger:
McDonalds burger surrounded by a HUGE amount of packaging. Photo: Sustainability Matters
"So you are owning a website called Sustainability Matters AND you are buying McDonalds burgers!? What a hypocrite."
I know, I know....I did it especially to make a point in this article. I could have lied or chose not to mention it, but I did not. 🙂

7. Transportation - "Drive-in" & Meat import

Several fast food chains offer special deals if people go through their "drive-in" window. In other words: not only do they serve food that destroys the environment, but you are saving some extra money by sitting in your car while you order the food!

Another huge problem is the amount of meat being transported through airplanes, boats, and trucks throughout the world. You might not know, but a lot of the McDonalds meat served in the USA are actually coming from Australia & New Zealand.
Riiight....that sounds environmentally friendly.
8. Factory Farming - "Think about the animals, they got feelings too!!"

This is actually not an element that I usually write an awful lot about. I mean; I hate people that torture animals, but I am not a big animal lover - and I strongly believe that the environmental cause is more important than the animal abuse cause.

Anyway. You don't have to spend a lot of time on Google before you find out about the huge KFC scandals featuring abuse of chickens. Here's one of the "harmless" videos:

And you can imagine how bad the cows in South America are treated - they just haven't been caught on camera yet.

Must-read: "Supersizing Urban America"

Over the last four-five years, I've read quite a lot of books about the fast-food industry.
It disgusts me.
However, I wasn't aware of the enormous benefits they are given by the American government. You can blame the fast-food chains as much as you want. But as long as you have a government that's willing to literally make people fatter.
Please, please, please read this book:
Believe me - you will not see government messages about obesity and healthy food in the same way again. This is an amazing book that everyone should read. It doesn't go too much into details in regards to the environmental impact of fast-food. But it does reveal how the American government literally sponsor the growth of these harmful companies.
Also read the article about me testing a veggie burger. Q: What are the biggest fast-food chains in the world?
A: This table will give you an idea:

Restaurant name

Number of restaurants worldwide

Serves mainly

Please note that these fast-food chains are ranked by revenue.
Q: Follow-up question: as McDonalds is the biggest one, does it automatically contribute with the largest carbon footprint?
A: Not necessarily. But in this case; yes. McDonalds do almost only offer beef/ kattle products, which is extremely harmful for the environment. If you want to read more about why the beef industry kills our planet, feel free to read this article.

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8 Reasons Why Fast Food is a HUGE Environmental Issue

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Politicians don't often mention the fast food industry when they debate climate change questions. But they should. This article will tell you why. But before we go into details: Fast food is the...

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Hong Kong's mounting food waste problem | CNN

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Nestled among the granite peaks of eastern Hong Kong a new, man-made mountain is emerging.

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People love to hate fast food. The industry peddles cheap, low-quality fare. It teaches kids bad eating habits. Its deep-fried calories are contributing to the obesity epidemic and other health problems plaguing the nation.

But for all the animosity, fast food is still a massive industry in the U.S. McDonald's ( MCD), by far the heavyweight in the sector, reported sales of $27.4 billion last year. Sales were down slightly more than 2 percent from the previous year, though.

McDonald's slump is a clear sign that times are changing for fast food. For one, children are eating less of it. A recent study in JAMA Pediatrics found that the percentage of children eating fast food on any given day fell to 32.6 percent in 2009 and 2010 from 38.8 percent a few years earlier.

Diners may be close to an inflection point of sorts, with many -- especially younger ones -- demanding healthier items with higher-quality ingredients. Yet others want prices to stay low and drive-thrus to get faster. It's a tough spot for many restaurant chains to be in. But this is a savvy bunch, and they're starting to adapt to the times. Sure, we hear plenty about their stumbles, but it turns out a few of them are making some smart business moves.

Click ahead to see 9 things that fast food companies are doing right.

1. Reducing antibiotics in chicken

As health officials grow more concerned about drug-resistant bacteria, McDonald's said it would phase out using chicken raised with antibiotics that are key to human health. It would still allow the use of antibiotics that don't impact human medicine.

The change is an important one. Meat companies have overused antibiotics for decades, and it's no coincidence that people are now dying from new breeds of superbugs that are resistant to drugs. Cattle ranchers and other agricultural users buy more than 30 million pounds of antibiotics a year -- or about 80 percent of all the antibiotics sold in the U.S., Eater reports.

Chick-fil-A is already in the process of removing all antibiotics from the chickens it uses. Now, the pressure may ramp up on KFC to cut back on the antibiotics used in its chicken.

2. Chipotle's profit formula

Chipotle Mexican Grill ( CMG) is categorized more in the realm of "fast casual" food, but it's still considered a competitor to McDonald's, Taco Bell and others. The chain is blowing the others out of the water when it comes to financial performance, however.

The company said profit rose a whopping 52 percent and sales rose 27 percent in the last three months of 2014. Just as impressive: When you look at restaurants open at least a year -- a key gauge for the industry -- sales rose 16 percent.

Chipotle doesn't offer the cheapest lunch out there, and it doesn't need to. Customers gladly pay more for organic and locally raised ingredients that don't have antibiotics or pesticides. The company even went so far as to suspend pork sales in some restaurants earlier this year when it found that one of its meat suppliers wasn't meeting its strict standards.

Chipotle's profit margin is up to 12 percent, an impressive number for the industry.

3. Sonic's momentum

Last month, Sonic ( SONC) posted a blow-out quarter and said its per-share earnings would grow by 25 percent to 27 percent this year, up from its earlier estimate of between 14 percent and 20 percent. That's a massive increase, one that Wall Street doesn't see very often. The stock has been an investor darling for a while now, rising 36 percent in the last year.

"Not every mid-priced restaurant chain is performing this well, even with lower gas prices," writes Tracey Ryniec on Zacks.com. "It's dog-eat-dog out there in the race for the consumers' dollars."

What is the drive-in chain doing right while the much larger McDonald's flails? It's constantly innovating with its menu, for one. The company hired a new head chef from Sweden who changed the company's "ice milk" dessert (think soft serve) to real ice cream milkshakes, Benzinga reports. Ice cream sales have risen 50 percent since 2011.

4. Wendy's image overhaul

Wendy's ( WEN) is in the middle of a massive remodel of its restaurants, dumping the tired-looking brick facade for a new look that includes soaring glass windows, dark gray trim and a distinctive red "blade" featuring its logo.

The new look has aesthetic appeal, but the motivation behind it is profit-driven. A remodeled store can see sales uptick of as much as 30 percent, The Columbus Dispatch reports.

Executives wanted more people to dine inside the restaurant rather than taking food away. People who eat inside tend to spend more, the Dispatch reports. "People want a nice, new, clean, cool place to eat," one industry consultant told the newspaper.

5. Dunkin' Donuts' new beverages

As gas prices have fallen and the economic recovery continues, people have more money to spend on fast food. Dunkin' Donuts ( DNKN) is seizing the financial opportunity with a new line of drinks.

Dunkin' Donuts debuted a new dark roast coffee last year and is sending new blenders to its U.S. restaurants to make frozen beverages, including smoothies, a Coolatta Lite and a cold Dunkaccino.

The innovation extends to the food side of the menu as well. The chain is selling a Turkey Sausage sandwich on multigrain flatbread for breakfast, for example.

6. Chick-fil-A's customer service

Chick-fil-A patrons regularly gush about the customer service at the chain's locations. In the drive-thru, for example, employees are polite as can be and always end a conversation by saying "My pleasure."

The phrase was inspired by the Ritz Carlton hotel chain, according to Fast Company. Chick-fil-A has been named the best drive-thru in America by the trade publication QSR.

7. Qdoba's revival

Qdoba floundered in what CEO Lenny Comma described as "a sea of sameness or in the copycat brand space," according to Nation's Restaurant News.

The chain, which is owned by Jack in the Box ( JACK), decided to undergo a vast transformation that Comma said was "in your face." Translation? Restaurants with a bright, bold design to match its food.

The overhaul included closing 62 underperforming locations, NRN reports, and changing the menu to give customers guacamole and queso sauce for no additional charge. The move appears to be a wild success: Qdoba's same-store sales in the first quarter saw a 14 percent spike compared with a 2.3 percent gain a year earlier.

Jack in the Box is going full-speed ahead with Qdoba's expansion plans as well. The company owns more than 600 Qdoba locations and wants to open as many as 60 in its current fiscal year.

8. Dropping sodas from kids' menus

Fast food chains still serve sodas to children upon request. But they're less likely to recommend the sugary drinks now.

Last month, Burger King ( BKW) became the latest company to remove fountain drinks from its children's menu. The move follows similar actions at McDonald's and Wendy's. Burger King now suggests milk, chocolate milk and apple juice for children.

Health officials say soda plays too big a role in the diets of many U.S. children.

9. A new crop of healthier choices

For decades, the industry has been dominated by a handful of chains. But consumers are now demanding more diverse and healthier dining options, and a new breed of fast food restaurants is rising to the challenge.

Amy's Kitchen, a natural foods company that has products in Safeway and other grocery stores, will open its first drive-thru location in California in May. It will offer an all-vegetarian menu that includes veggie burgers, single-portion pizzas and burritos.

Another company in California is planning an all-produce fast-food restaurant in Oakland this year. In Arizona, a gourmet salad drive thru is opening its fourth and fifth location this year. Salad chain Sweetgreen has several dozen locations in Washington D.C., New York, Virginia and other states.

To be sure, none of these companies is ready to take down McDonald's. But they are offering healthier options for less money than you might think, ratcheting up the pressure on Ronald McDonald and others to turn over a new leaf.

First published on April 6, 2015 / 5:59 AM

© 2015 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Kim Peterson

Kim Peterson is a financial journalist covering business and the economy. She has written for several online and print publications, including MSN Money and The Seattle Times.

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People love to hate fast food. The industry peddles cheap, low-quality fare. It teaches kids bad eating habits. Its deep-fried calories are contributing to the obesity epidemic and other health problems plaguing the nation. But for all the animosity, fast food is still a massive industry in the U.S.

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Americans flock to fast food like bees to honey. From drive-thrus to supermarkets, fast food is everywhere.

As if pink slime and obesity weren't enough, here are 10 more shocking ways fast food wreaks havoc on our health, animals, and the environment:

What are the effects of fast food on our health?

1. Depression

Studies show that piggin' out on junk food is directly linked to depression, even in small quantities. Affecting an estimated 121 million people worldwide, results reveal that consumers of fast food are 51 percent more likely to develop depression or some form of mental illness.
2. Premature Aging
Forget botox and ditch the fast food instead. The sugars, trans fats, and starches found in fast food cause insulin levels to spike, triggering an inflammatory response in the body. The end product? Glycation. This speeds the aging process and destroys the body's own natural age fighting antioxidants making you more prone to skin damage and premature aging.

3. Aspirin Dependency

Tyramine, a chemical found in food colorants, dyes, and nitrates (nitrates are common in hot dogs and other processed meats) is a known headache inducer. Experts believe that Tyramine increases blood flow to the brain which in turn causes vascular changes that result in headaches, leaving you reaching for the aspirin.

...on animals?

4. Factory Farming

Most, if not all, meat, eggs, and dairy products used in fast food is produced at factory farms. In factory farms, animals are forced to endure inherently cruel and inhumane conditions that deprive them of all their basic instincts.
5. Hormones
In efforts to make the fast food industry more profitable, animals are fed hormones that increase growth, milk, and egg production which can lead to painful inflammation of the udder known as mastitis, as well as crippling and debilitating conditions for poultry.

6. Assembly Lines

In the fast food industry, profit margins are slim and volume is everything, meaning workers are pressured to kill more animals in less time. Most facilities operate 24 hours a day seven days a week, slaughtering and processing hundreds of thousands of animals every hour.

...on the environment?
7. Packaging
Fast food places use a heck of a lot of packaging. From the wrappers and straws to the boxes and bags, fast food packaging counts for an estimated 40 percent of all litter (including drinks, chips, candy, and other snacks) with Styrofoam being the most common food waste. What's more, Styrofoam takes an unbelievable 900 years to breakdown in landfill!

8. Greenhouse Gases

You probably wouldn't think of eating a Big Mac as contributing to your carbon footprint but the intensive resources required to make just a standard cheeseburger, from growing the wheat to make the buns to feeding the cattle, and eventually their slaughter, and even the energy required to pickle the cucumbers, the resulting consumption is phenomenal converting to CO2 emissions of somewhere between 1 - 3.5 kg (and that's not taking into account the methane produced by the cow itself).

9. Transportation

It's not just burgers and chips that play a role in the effects that fast food have on the environment. Ready meals and other prepared food is equally to blame for damaging our precious planet. Distributing trucks add to the Pollution, emissions, and congestion, all of which contribute to climate change. Reports suggest that ordering online and having groceries delivered to your door can actually cut carbon costs, but an even better idea is to buy locally and always car share or walk when possible.
10. Water Contamination
Thanks to all the pathogens, hormones, drugs, and fertilizers that are used to produce fast food, seeping into our water supplies, water quality has suffered dramatically. Outbreaks of waterborne illness including E. Coli, marine life dead zones, and numerous other hazards can all be contributed to fast food.

In sum, as you can see, fast food is definitely far from the best choice for you, animals or the planet. So instead, opt for a home-prepared meal of locally-grown foods, for maximum resource reduction and the best health benefits, or, if you fancy an eat-out, choose more conscious eateries through a quick browse on Yelp, Happy Cow, or a humane eating app for suggestions prior to stepping out the door.

Image Source: SteFou!/Flickr

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10 Ways Fast Food is Destroying the World

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As if pink slime and obesity weren't enough, here are 10 more shocking ways fast food wreaks havoc on our health, animals, and the environment.

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The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, aka the Pacific Gyre is roughly the size of Texas and contains about 3.5 million tons of trash, floating between Hawaii and San Francisco. About 80 percent of marine plastic pollution comes from the land. Clean Water Action (CWA) decided to learn more about the sources of trash that end up in the San Francisco Bay Area so the non-profit organization decided to collect samples of street litter from four Bay Area cities (Oakland, Richmond, San Jose, and South San Francisco) from October 2010 through April 2011. CWA collected trash from a few locations in each city.

CWA found that the biggest source (49 percent) of litter is fast food. The five most significant sources were McDonalds, Burger King, Seven Eleven, Starbucks and Wendy's. Up to 31 percent, according to CWA's findings, of the trash collected could be eliminated by reusable alternatives.

"The quantities of trash and plastic pollution in waterways are increasing dramatically. California regulators have been responding to this problem but the result is that the local government is having to spend millions of dollars in controlling trash. This is a short-term solution that doesn't get at the root cause of the problem," said Miriam Gordon, California director of CWA.

Gordon told Fast Company about one simple solution to help reduce trash: napkin dispensers. Gordon said, "We've spoken to restaurant owners who felt that they were spending too much money on napkins. Napkin dispensers make it hard to grab more napkins than you need, so [they] save money, and there are fewer napkins that can become litter."

"Even just asking customers if they need napkins, straws, and utensils before loading up their take-out bags could make a difference," the Fast Company article stated. "Many of the straws found on the street by Clean Water Action were still in their wrappers."
Starbucks sets an example
Starbucks is cited by the article as an example of a company that is trying to reduce its trash pollution. In the company's Global Responsibility Report 2010 it lists the goal of making 100 percent of its cups reusable or recyclable by 2015. With over 17,000 retail sites worldwide, achieving that goal would mean much less trash ending up in garbage cans or on the streets.

In 2008, Starbucks set the goal of developing recycling solutions for its paper and plastic cups by 2012 in order to meet its 2015 goal. "We're currently on track to meet this goal," the report stated.

Starbucks hosted cup summits in Seattle in May 2009 and Boston in April 2010 where the company met with government officials, raw material suppliers, cup manufacturers, retail and beverage businesses, recyclers, competitors, conservation groups and academic experts. Early last year, it started a pilot program in seven of its Manhattan stores to test the recyclability of its paper cups with old corrugated cardboard. Starbucks expanded the program to 86 of its New York stores later in the year. This year it plans to launch recycling programs "in a number of our store communities."

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Fast Food Garbage Makes up 50% of Street (and Pacific Gyre) Litter

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The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, aka the Pacific Gyre is roughly the size of Texas and contains about 3.5 million tons of trash, floating between Hawaii and San Francisco. About 80 percent of marine