Building a better future: Earth Month efforts and beyond

tms remains committed to creating a better, more sustainable future. We are uniquely positioned to take action while also inspiring and collaborating with clients to drive results.

We’re making great progress against our Better Future Blueprint — our enterprise-wide framework that defines our path forward to thinking bigger and broader about the impact we can have on the world.

Amy Zettlemoyer-Lazar, VP Global Sustainability and Innovation, said, “This is an exciting time to be working for tms. We have a top tier leadership team that has embraced big commitments with our partners across HAVI and very talented employees across all areas of tms who are passionate and committed to meeting these goals.”

This Earth month, we’re reflecting on our recent sustainability efforts as we look to what the next steps are in our sustainability journey. Over the past year we’ve achieved:

Setting Science Based Targets

Building on existing commitments, we aim to achieve net zero by reducing our carbon emissions by at least 90% and neutralizing the residual 10% emissions with permanent carbon removals as needed. On the path toward achieving this target, we’ve also committed to a medium-term goal of reducing our scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030.

This includes our direct operations such as offices, operated facilities, and HAVI’s operated distribution centers. We are also updating our scope 3 emissions target to align with the latest methodology established by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). Our scope 3 target, which addresses our extended value chain, is under development. We have submitted our targets for approval by SBTi and anticipate final approval by year-end.

Receiving a Planet Mark Certification

In partnership with Planet Mark, a global sustainability certification program, tms undertook a rigorous effort to measure our carbon footprint across nine tms offices. As part of the certification process, we have also pledged to decrease our footprint year-over-year through reductions in energy, waste, water, travel, and procurement.

We are in the process of pursuing Planet Mark certification for 2022, and as we look to 2023, we are excited to further expand the number of tms sites we’d like to certify.

Recycling for Good

Following the McDonald’s 2021 “Green Growth Engines (GGE)” announcement, a parallel program called “Recycle for Good” was created out of the tms office in Shanghai. This platform was designed to reduce waste and advance recovery, while developing industrial scale framework to reuse wastes and turn them into valuable items for restaurants and consumers.

tms Shanghai office has successfully launched several items containing recycled materials, including coffee grounds from McCafé, recycled ABS from leftover Happy Meal® toys, recycled polypropylene plastic, recycled paper collected from local vendors and suppliers. By recycling materials from single use or short life products into multi-use or longer life products, this creates less waste in the environment.

Turning cups into books

In our Q1 2022 German Happy Meal® promotion, the books distributed within were created using 40% recycled cold cup material, helping to promote the concept of closed-loop recycling and giving used material a unique second life. The reading and recycling promotion created a selection of seven books with stories related to the environment and nature.

Winning a global sustainability award

HAVI and tms were honored to receive the 2022 Global Sustainability Award at McDonald’s Worldwide Convention in April 2022 for efforts to establish goals, develop strategies and drive sustainability transformation in packaging and Happy Meal®.

To ensure the operation of a sustainable supply chain at McDonald’s, we have developed 2025 Packaging & Waste country roadmap commitments, and we helped achieve McDonald’s 2020 goal to source 100% of fiber-based packaging from Chain of Custody certified sources.

Making an impact on our communities 

In 2022, we partnered with Let’s Do It World in support of World Cleanup Day to inspire our people across the globe to bring our commitments to life and put our values into action. The result of our collective partnership and global efforts included 33 events, with 914 participants, totaling 1,868 volunteer hours, and removing 7,056.5 kg (about 15,557 lbs) of litter to make a significant impact on the earth and the communities where we live, work, and learn. We are excited to continue our partnership with Let’s Do it World this year — supporting both World Cleanup and Digital Cleanup efforts.