McDonald’s is making a major change at restaurants – and McFlurry fans will really notice a difference

MCDONALD'S is scrapping plastic cutlery and introducing a new paper-based alternative.

The American-founded fast food chain is introducing the recyclable pressed-paper knives, forks and spoons from today.

The company hopes it will eliminate a staggering 858 metric tonnes of plastic across the UK every year.

It comes after it ditched plastic toys from happy meals, straws and stirrers in a bid to be more eco-friendly.

Nina Prichard, head of sustainable and ethical sourcing at Maccie's, said: "We’re pleased to announce another step forward in eliminating single-use plastics and it’s great to be switching our famous McFlurry spoons to this new paper-based material."

The new cutlery, made from pressed paper and compostable, will be rolled out in McDonald's restaurants in England and Wales from today in a phased approach.

This follows the switch being made in restaurants in Scotland and Ireland in the first half of the year.

The move comes as part of McDonald's "Plan for Change", which includes a goal to achieve net zero emissions across its UK and Ireland business by 2040.

In 2019, McDonald's also ditched plastic McFlurry lids, but it kept the plastic spoons at the time.

And a year earlier, it started phasing out plastic straws and replaced them with paper ones.

McDonald's is not the only company to make switches to tackle eco-damaging practices.

Nestle replaced its Quality Street shiny wrappers with paper-based eco-friendly ones in October.

Bar two of the flavours, all the chocolates are now wrapped in a duller form of waxed, recyclable paper.

Meanwhile, a number of supermarkets have made efforts to help the environment.

In August, Aldi ditched the colour codes on milk packaging and Lidl made a similar change.

Coca-Cola has started rolling out new caps on its bottles to ensure they end up in recycling bins.