An advertising campaign to promote McDonald’s garlic chilli sauce as Singapore’s “national sauce” is at the centre of a formal complaint lodged by a member of the public to the advertising standards authority, due to inappropriate messaging that boasts about how many sauce sachets the burger chain gives away.
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Singapore’s ad watchdog, however, ruled that the fast food chain’s campaign did not breach its advertising code.
The promotion’s primary focus was extolling the popularity of McDonald’s garlic chilli sauce, said chairman of Advertising Standards Authority Of Singapore (ASAS) Bryan Tan, and how it distributed the sauce was outside of the organisation’s purview, in response to Eco-Business’ queries.
Single-use plastic sachets, which are hard to recycle as they are multi-layered and made from different materials, are a commonly used way to dispense food in small quantities in Southeast Asia. The European Union, on the other hand, has plans to outlaw small sachets by 2030, with increasing awareness of how they contribute to the plastic waste crisis.
The complaint submitted to ASAS noted that McDonald’s, in its recent National Day ad campaign, is inappropriate at a time when Singapore is struggling to contain plastic consumption and waste.
The ad in question, which launched on billboards and on social media, promotes McDonald’s garlic chilli sauce – a sauce exclusively distributed in outlets across the city-state – as Singapore’s “national sauce” and states that the fast food chain gives away 134 million sachets every year.
The campaign portrays McDonald’s as a company that is “proud to waste”, said the complainant, who did not want to be named. He had spotted the advertisement on an expressway billboard and felt outraged at the pervasiveness of plastic consumption in Singapore, while noting the contrast in how plastic waste is managed after returning from a trip to Europe.
A complaint was lodged on 7 August to ASAS, and noted that the volume of sauce sachets given away as advertised would amount to more than 1,000 tonnes of packaging that is almost impossible to recycle.
The campaign messaging conflicts with McDonald’s “green commitment” to reduce the environmental footprint of its packaging in Singapore, the complaint said. Measures the company has taken include refill stations in-store to reduce the number of individual sauce sachets it gives away. McDonald’s gives away sauce sachets in takeaways.
A line in the campaign that says “It’s a Singapore thing” suggests that hyper-consumption is a trait of Singapore culture, the complainant said.
According to checks on social media, McDonald’s Singapore is still running the advertisement on its platforms. The campaign also includes other executions including the lines “Present in almost every home” and “The sauce that goes with everything” that promotes the condiment in different ways.
McDonald’s did not respond to Eco-Business’ request for comment.
An oversized McDonald’s arches logo filled with garlic chilli sauce sachets at Singapore’s Changi Airport. Consumers are invited to take as many as they want to “get the taste of home” wherever they travel. Image: Eco-Business
McDonald’s is also currently giving away free sachets at Changi Airport, dispensing them out of a large arches logo (pictured, right). Consumers are invited to take as many as they want to “get the taste of home” wherever they travel.
The campaign emerges two months after new statistics showed that Singapore’s plastic recycling rate had dropped to 5 per cent, far below the global plastic recycling rate of 9 per cent. Almost all of the plastic consumed in Singapore is incinerated.
Singapore produced 909,000 tonnes of plastic waste in 2023, considerably less than the 945,000 tonnes produced in 2022, a drop partly attributed to the introduction of a charge on plastic bags.
Plastic is Singapore’s biggest domestic waste stream. The government plans to introduce a polluter-pays system to increase the recycling rate for beverage containers, with a much-delayed deposit return scheme slated for 2026.
