Life Cycle Analysis Big Mac free essay sample

There are many questions hanging in the air around these numbers. How socially responsible the conglomerate McDonald’s is for negative externalities created by both consumption and production? What environmental impacts does McDonald’s create by the production of Big Mac and what methods does McDonald’s use to reduce it? Life cycle analysis is a technique which assesses these environmental impacts on group of different aspects during the whole life of the product. By carrying out the this analysis, I go through the whole process and life of product from the cradle to the grave and it will hopefully bring me closer to these impacts, hidden behind the curtain, hidden from knowledge of public. In order to figure out as many quantitative and measurable data as possible, in group of three we disassembled the Big Mac Burger. We separated different parts of burger and put each in different beaker; then we measured the mass of it. We will write a custom essay sample on Life Cycle Analysis Big Mac or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page We recorded these figures: With these figures, we assume that the beef contained in the 2 piece of meat is 100% beef; and due the McDonald’s website it is 100% beef indeed. We can only speculate the reliability of this statement. We also assume that 45. 0g of the dairy products is only cheese. In fact, it was slice of cheese with sauce and lettuce all stuck together and we had difficulties to separate them, so we assume that all together, it is only cheese that was contained. We did not include the sesame seeds on the surface of bread. Packaging was a simple box, made of harder paper. Pre-production involves growing the raw materials that are used it final production of the product. Specifically for the Big Mac it is growing crops for the bread; grow cows for beef meet, extraction of milk for bread, cheese and sauce and growing lettuce. Inventory of analysis Bread – 90. 2 g Beef – 65. 1 g Cheese and dairy products – 45. 0 g Packaging (carton) – 13. 6 g Soil Pollution: I did not find any evidence of direct pollution of soil caused by production of Big Mac, however, in the same case of water pollution; the soil pollution can be caused by the use of fertilizers and pesticides. Also, if farmers use the land with no interruption, and grow the crops on the land every season without leaving the land rest for one season every couple of years, the land losses its fertility and nutrition and becomes less and less arable. This does not contribute to the sustainable development, since the future generation can’t enjoy the fertile land like we previously did. Air Contamination: The farming of cattle such as cows produces a large amount of methane and ammonia which emits to the atmosphere and causes air contamination. Although this might sound ridiculous to us, the emission of methane caused by cows is actually very significant. It is known that methane contributes to the global warming. Statistically, an average cow produces 110 kg of methane per year. CONCLUSION The life cycle analysis of Big Mac outlined internal weaknesses of McDonald’. What McDonald can keep on improving is the energy consumption and air contamination in the production process. They might try creating their packaging more recyclable and avoiding land filling as much as possible.