McDonald's: Over 20 billion served...then trashed?

Keep Britain Tidy, a British anti-trash campaign run by a prominent environmental group, just released a survey of the garbage it found strewn all over 10 of England's city streets, including London. Its headliner finding: McDonald's accounts for 29% of the fast-food trash left across the country. In the city of Birmingham, as much as 41% of the chain-store litter came from McDonald's. Other corporate culprits perpetually inhabiting the gutter included KFC (fourth place) and Subway (fifth place).

The problem is getting worse, too, the campaign reported. Six years ago, 16% of British streets were considered messy, and by the same standards, a quarter now are.

Keep Britain Tidy is trying to use the findings to force the big fast-food chains to be more active in keeping their customers from littering in the first place. I'm not really sure how they're going to do that short of asking customers to bring their own plates.

But the group has floated some early ideas, including giving a discount to people who eat their food at the restaurant or giving small money-back vouchers to people who bring back their used cups, containers, and wrappers for recycling, the way some states' bottle deposits work.