McDonald’s shareholders voted against a report on use of plastic straws at their annual meeting Thursday, asserting that many of the chain’s 37,000 restaurants are already taking steps to deal with the problem of plastic waste and sustainability.
Less than 8 percent of shareholders voted for the proposal, which asked the company to report on its plastic straw use as a step toward a ban, the BBC reported. The board of directors had encouraged shareholders to vote against the proposal.
Environmentalists want plastic straws banned because they end up in landfills and don’t degrade for thousands of years. Viral videos have even shown straws becoming lodged in animals’ noses or mouths after being dumped in the ocean.
McDonald’s said in March it would get rid of plastic straws in the U.K., which has considered banning some types of plastics. New paper straws that biodegrade are being used in those restaurants, but shareholders didn’t want to force all U.S. restaurants to adopt the more expensive option just yet.
The activist group SumOfUs collected 480,000 names on a petition asking the chain to make the change and keep 95 million plastic McDonald's straws used each day out of landfills and oceans, CBS News reported.
Some Twitter users said they would stop eating at McDonald’s because of the vote.