I'm 13 years old, and I’ve been going to McDonald’s with my mom and dad since before I can remember. But every time we go, I think about just how much plastic our food is served in -- and how McDonald’s doesn’t have recycling bins, so all that recyclable plastic goes straight into the garbage.

McDonald’s doesn’t let customers recycle all the plastic their food is served in, so it ends up in the trash. That should change. Tell McDonald’s to put recycling bins in all of their restaurants.

I love going to McDonald’s for breakfast on the weekends with my family, and usually order the hotcakes. They come in a plastic container, and I eat them with a plastic fork while I’m drinking out of a cup with a plastic straw and a plastic lid. That means every time my family eats at McDonald’s, another dozen or so pieces of recyclable plastic end up in a landfill.

I know McDonald's can put recycling bins in its restaurants, because in some countries, they already do -- there are countries where 90% of McDonald’s trash gets recycled, reused, or composted! But instead, according to McDonald’s themselves, here in the United States they send 85,000 tons of plastic to the landfill every single year.

This irresponsible behavior is ruining our environment and needs to change. Letting tens of thousands of pounds of plastic pile up in our landfills each year isn’t sustainable, and McDonald’s ignoring the problem won’t make it go away. Future generations deserve better!

Sign my petition to tell McDonald’s they should keep millions of pounds of plastic from going to the landfill every year by letting their customers recycle their used plastic.