McDonald's volunteers clean up York after the Jorvik Viking Festival

18 crew members and helpers from the restaurants, which are owned and operated by local Franchisee John Atherton, alongside local volunteers collected an impressive 10 full bags of rubbish between them.

The areas tidied up were all viewing points for the infamous March to Coppergate and included St Helen’s Square, Parliament Street and The Coppergate Centre.

McDonald’s Franchisee John Atherton who owns and operates the restaurant/s, and who organised the event, said: “I couldn’t be prouder of my fantastic team for giving their time to take part in a post-event litter pick for the Jorvik Viking Festival. We take our responsibility towards litter very seriously, as well as being a good neighbour in the local community, so it’s great to be able to offer our support at such an important event – particularly this year as McDonald’s celebrates its 50th anniversary in the UK.”

McDonald’s crew members have been cleaning up litter dropped in local communities for over 35 years. Crews across the UK cover a total of 5,000 miles each week on litter patrols (where they collect all types of litter, not just McDonald’s branded packaging). This equates to 260,000 miles, or the distance from Earth to the Moon.

McDonald’s is tackling litter in local communities, both by litter picking and reducing the amount of waste its restaurants produce. The brand has been working to make recycling easier over the past four years too, and since 2015, has installed over 1,100 new recycling units, meaning it’s easier to separate plastics and cups for recycling in 85% of its restaurants. McDonald’s also collects used oil from its kitchens and turns this into enough biodiesel to fuel more than half of its delivery fleet.