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Introduction

Hotel and tourism are considered one of the largest industry in the world, and it continues to expand at an alarming rate. Hotel and tourism have been an essential economic tool making it a promising industry and the development form for many regions and countries worldwide. Although the hotel and tourism industry has been viewed as a key aspect of the economic development, it is often accompanied by the negative impacts which lead to the environmental issues such as pollution, labor, degradation of the natural resources, and encroachment, among others (Graci & Dodds, 2008). The statistics show that in 2016, Canada's hotel and tourism industry contributed almost 2% of the Gross Domestic Product (G.D.P.), equivalent to $27.4 billion (Zhang et al., 2020). Additionally, the industry created more than 700,000 jobs for Canadians. Over the years, Canada has been experiencing environmental problems whereby many companies, especially in the hotel and tourism industry, lack efficient strategies for dealing with such issues. For that matter, the government of Canada, through the ministry of environment, has been calling for all the business entities within the country to develop workable strategies for dealing with environmental issues.

Going green is one of the major strategies suggested to be effective in controlling environmental issues. McDonald's Canada is considered one of the largest fast-food chain companies in the world. The company has operations in almost every country in the world. In 2019, McDonald's Canada opened two green concept restaurants in Ontario and Vancouver (Peng & Chen, 2019). The two restaurants were considered part of the organizational commitment toward sustainability in packaging and reducing their environmental footprints. To ensure that the green concept is workable in the company, it sourced 100% of its guest packaging from materials that are renewable or can be recycled (Nain, 2018). The McDonald's green concept restaurants applied the packaging options available at the company's premises and tested others. While talking about the green concept, John Betts, McDonald's Canada President and the C.E.O., said, "We are proud of the progress our Canadian organization is making towards our global packaging sustainability goals - it matters to our guests, and we will continue taking our environmental responsibility seriously (Satta et al., 2019)"The company is looking forward to ensuring that it reduces its negative environmental impacts with almost 60% by using the products which can be recycled or renewed. This proposal, therefore, tries to find out the essence of the going green concept based on whether it can help in reducing the modern environmental issues associated with the business entities or not.

Literature Review

Despite having many studies conducted on environmental management and corporate sustainability, it has not been understood why many organizations are more proactive when it comes to environmental issues than others (Chen et al., 2021). The majority of the researchers have been much concerned with the manufacturing industries while forgetting the service industry. The studies of the service industry, such as the ones conducted with the hotel sector, have had little attention in the literature despite the demanding environmental importance of the tourism industry, particularly the impacts of the hotel industry on the general environment. According to the World Bank Group statistics, the hotel and tourism industry was the least developed based on its corporate social responsibility and the code of conduct. The environmental impacts of the hotel and tourism industry are highly neglected in the literature leading to the essence of understanding why there has been limited implementation of initiatives (AlZgool et al., 2021). Additionally, there has been a lack of studies that account for both the country and industry effects. For that matter, a thorough analysis of the factors which affect the environmental commitment level in the hotel and tourism industry is pertinent in the strategies leading to the action leading to this problem.

Previously, there have been examples of the essence of the green concept in the hotel and tourism industry. However, most of the information about these studies has not been disseminated on the scales which are broader to the different organizations in the industry, and it is never presented in a manner that is cohesive to explain more about the benefits or the business cases for all the hotels and other food-making companies (Alipour et al., 2019). Most of the big multinational schools have a wide network of sharing cost-benefit initiative analyses amongst their chain; however, their business cases have not been sufficiently developed in all the hotel and tourism industry. Many scholars have viewed McDonald's Canada as one of the companies to have successfully utilized the green concept as a sustainability mechanism and also to mitigate the environmental issues associated with the industry. The company has been using a fully repulpable cup for the beverages which are cold. In this case, the cup uses a coating which aqueous, and that can be accepted in the streams for recycling (Alipour et al., 2019). McDonald's Canada also uses fiber lids. The lids are made from 100% Forest Stewardship Council wood fiber, which is certified and can be recycled. The lid also helps in reducing the use of the straw since the guests can directly sip from it. Other items the company is planning to implement as long as the green concept is concerned are; wooden cutlery, wooden stir sticks, paper straws, napkins, foam, small coffee cups, etc. (Alipour et al., 2019). Since 2019, McDonald's Canada has been applying these strategies to reduce the amount of waste they dump into the environment.

Purpose of the Study

Since there have never been clear studies about the essence of going green or green concept as long as environmental conservation is concerned, this paper will seek to investigate how it has been applied in McDonald's Canada and how it has benefitted the company and also the whole industry. This will provide a clear image and convincing reasons why other companies should or should not start practicing the green concept in modern society.

Method

McDonald's Canada is one of the fast-food delivery companies in Canada. Almost 10% of Canadians have ever used the services from the McDonald's Company. As it had been stated in the introduction part, McDonald's Canada has been on the frontline to ensure that it is committed to the green concept to minimize its negative environmental impacts on society. In this case, this study will investigate the two McDonald's Canada Green Concept Restaurants at 3444 E Hastings St, Vancouver, BC, and 1033 Wonderland Rd South, London, Ontario. The two branches were the pioneers of the green concept whereby since it was implemented in 2019, it has reduced the organizational cost by almost 30% and also reduced the company's environmental issues by almost 25%. To ensure that the information about the essence of the green concept is reliable, this paper will employ the correlational research design. This type of research design would investigate the relationship between the different variables without manipulating any of them. Here, the two variables will be the green concept and its impact on the business organizations. The research will, therefore, focus on the areas where McDonald's Canada has been applying the green concept and how it has benefitted from the same. The green concepts would include; the wooden things used by the company for packaging, the lids, and any other renewable object used by the company as a way of minimizing the negative environmental impacts on the society.

This study will entail primary and secondary sources. The secondary sources will include the reviewed journal articles about the essence of going green, newspapers, books, or any other printed material relevant to the study. After gathering information from the secondary sources, the paper will go ahead and use the questionnaire to get first-hand information from the management, employees, and the customers of McDonald's company. In this case, the paper will select a sample of ten management teams to answer the questions related to the management, ten employees to answer the questions related to them, and ten customers to answer the questions related to them. The response of each participant will be recorded and used for the analysis and deriving the conclusion. Each group of the participants will be interviewed on specific dates to ensure that they are settled with the responses they deliver. The paper will finally compile the findings from the secondary sources and the interview to come to a conclusion.

Expected Results

After gathering the information about the essence of the green concept from the primary and secondary sources, the paper will analyze the data using the descriptive method. Here, the paper will explain the results provided by the respondents based on the definition of the green concept, how it has been applied in McDonald's Canada, and how it has impacted the company and the larger hotel and tourism industry as long as the environmental commitment is concerned. Here, every aspect will be logically described using the facts from the primary and secondary studies. To ensure that the readers understand the results easily, the paper will present the results in tables, graphs, and diagrams. There will also be a concise analysis of the results for all people to understand what they entail and how the organizations can use them to enhance their sustainability and reduce environmental impacts on society.

The expected findings of the study are as follows. First, there will be likely to have economic benefits through the implementation of the environmental initiatives; however, many firms' deterrence is the capital cost that must be expended prior to the benefits beings gained. The majority of the respondents will be expected to mention the benefits of the green concept such as; cost savings, competitive advantage that leads to a positive company's image, enhancing loyalty among the employees, retention of the customers, regulatory compliance, management of the risks, enhanced social responsibility, and the promising future of the organization and the larger hotel and management industry. The paper also expects the respondents to suggest the challenges of the green concept, such as; higher costs, difficulty in managing environmental changes, and difficulties in adapting to the fast technological changes. These results will be limited to McDonald's Canada since the study will be based on the organization.

Discussion

The business world is currently concerned with the environmental issues arising from business entities. Previous studies have been mainly focusing on the manufacturing industries while forgetting the service industries. This paper, therefore, is expected to provide the formal research knowledge base as well as the organizational decision-making. Here, the paper will usher other research related to the service industries in an attempt to provide long-term solutions as long as environmental issues are concerned (Alipour et al., 2019). As has been stated above, many researchers in the past have been focusing on the environmental impacts of the manufacturing industry without considering the impacts of the service industry. This means that this research will show the importance of environmental consideration in the service industry by showing how McDonald's Canada has benefitted from the same. The research will also provide ideas to the companies or firms in the hotel and tourism industry based on how they can implement the green concept to reduce their operational costs and maximize profits (AlZgool et al., 2021). The implications for this study are as follows. First, the government will use the findings to develop the policies and laws calling for all the companies operating in the hotel and tourism industry to apply the green concept to handle the issues associated with the environmental impacts on the environment, which will help the organizations operating within the hotel and tourism industry to develop new policies of what the employees and the customers are expected to conduct themselves as long as the green concept is concerned, and finally, the study will help the company to enhance its competitive advantage within the industry (AlZgool et al., 2021). Like any other research, this research design is likely to have the limitations, such as; it will sample only thirty participants who may not provide the reliable information, and there are limited research studies about a similar topic hence making it difficult to get enough information to support the arguments, and the fast-changing technology may make the information gathered from the study not working by the time the research is complete. With all these limitations, the study is expected to consider all the research requirements while ensuring that everything is in the right direction as long as the study procedures are concerned.