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UPDATE:<\/strong> Happy April Fools’ Day!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n McDonald’s announced this morning<\/a> that it would discontinue plans for a worldwide composting initiative after scientists confirmed that no item on the McDonald’s menu is compostable<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The plan to keep food waste—more than 1.5 billion tons a month—out of landfills would have been the largest composting program in the world, with bright green composting bins at all the 31,000-plus restaurants around the world.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But McDonald’s halted the plan after scientists at the University of California-Berkeley discovered that none of the items on the McDonald’s menu would compost<\/a> in the next 500 years, nor would any start breaking down for an estimated 1,000 years, the projected life span of a plastic bag<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n “To be honest, this food is better off in a landfill.” said lead researcher Donald MacGregor, from the University of California-Berkeley, on a press call early this morning. “It would get in the way of perfectly good compostable materials. Additionally, gardeners disliked the highly acidic leaching of the non-composting Big Macs in field tests.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n McDonald’s says it has no plans to reconsider the idea. However, company officials will be considering other waste management options, such as incineration and outer-atmospheric storage.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n “It would have been great for McDonald’s to lead the way on corporate composting,” said McDonald’s CEO Jim Skinner at a press conference today outside the fast food giant’s headquarters in Oak Brook, Illinois. “We had to make a tough decision, but in the end I think we made the right one for us and for the environment.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A source at Greenpeace says today’s announcement is “extremely disturbing.” The group plans to launch a campaign<\/a> to get McDonald’s to overhaul its menu.<\/p>\n Related Links:<\/strong><\/p>\n McDonald’s responds to April Fools’ story (via Twitter)<\/a><\/p>\n What to make of the Pollan\/Schlosser agreement with Wendy’s?<\/a><\/p>\n