How to take the waste out of takeout

Zero waste takeout during and after coronavirus (COVID-19)

Who doesn’t crave a pizza from their favorite restaurant at the moment? It’s the ultimate comfort food when the world around us seems almost unrecognizable due to COVID-19. 

So it’s no surprise that we’re all continuing to get takeout, for various reasons:

• To support your local restaurants that are only allowed to serve takeout at the moment – yeay!
• Because you’re tired of cooking – no judgement! (This is true in our case; we usually get takeout on a weekend night…) 
• Because getting your favorite grub frankly helps you keep sane during these crazy times – fair enough.

Incidentally, meal delivery services saw year-over-year growth of 24 percent in March 2020 (numbers for April aren’t out yet, but my guess would be they’re even higher).

Which puts us zero wasters in a great moral dilemma. Takeout is almost impossible without (waste, that is). The facts are staggering:

• 561 billion disposable takeout packaging items are used in the US each year‍, which make up…
• 4.9 million tons of waste generated from food service disposables annually, which in turn…  ‍
• cost $1 billion USD annually in the U.S. to manage (collect, recycle or dispose of).
• 75% of those numbers account for takeout; 21% for dining in (whoever dines in a restaurant that uses throw-away dishware and cutlery needs to take a serious look in the mirror!); and 4% for delivery in 2016, “although more recent data suggest that this number has increased sharply since then.”

Unfortunately, the coronavirus seems to have accelerated the problem. There is no convincing evidence that reusable bags, cups or containers contribute to the spread of the novel coronavirus any more or any less than their single-use counterparts.

Yet, from the San Francisco Bay Area to New York, municipalities are temporarily repealing bans on single-use plastic bags and prohibiting reusables in food service settings. 

How to reduce waste from takeouts

We zero wasters don’t give up easily. Here are some ideas on how we can take the waste out of the takeout, even during COVID-19:

• Order directly from the restaurant by phone or through their website if possible, rather than through a food delivery service, as this gives you the option to make special requests… see next bullets.
• If you’re super lucky and live in an area that has a reusable takeout dishware subscription service like GoBox (Portland, OR) or GreenToGo (Durham, NC), ask for your takeout to be packaged in them. As far as I’m aware, these awesome services are still operating even under COVID-19.

• Don’t have a service like that in your area yet? Register your interest with Forever Ware, a Minneapolis-based reusable takeout container program that’s planning to launch in other cities, too!

“Given the critical move to takeout for many restaurants, there has been a spike in the amount of waste being created in cities. Reusable takeout dishware programs like Forever Ware provide commercial sanitation to prevent the spread of viruses in case of future pandemics, while allowing restaurants to make progress on sustainable initiatives.”

Natasha Gaffer, Founder & CEO, Forever Ware

• Request your order without extras like napkins, forks, sauce sachets, cheese tubs, etc. (unless you really can’t live without your favorite cheese sauce). The restaurant should be happy about this as it saves them money and it reduces waste.
• Choose curbside pickup over delivery if possible. If you’re picking up, you can ask them there and then not to add any extras and to drop the bag, too. 
• Select meals that come in minimal packaging like burritos or kabobs, if possible.

• If you know how the restaurants tend to package their food, you may want to order from those who use recycled or compostable packaging and not styrofoam or black plastic that are non-recyclable in most areas.

It’s not ideal, but it’s these small steps that will keep us afloat on takeouts until some of the policies banning bring-your-own (BYO) packaging are lifted again post-COVID.

And there’s more we can all do, whether it’s COVID-19 or not:

• Have a conversation – make restaurants and food vendors aware if you’re unhappy with their choice of packaging and ask if they’ve thought about alternatives (chances are, they probably have and probably have a reason for why they’re using that type of packaging). It shows them that you, i.e. their customers, care, and maybe they will reconsider.
• Vote with your feet / dollars, or even publicly – if you’re the type of person who leaves reviews for restaurants or food vendors, why don’t you mention the packaging. Give praise for “good” packaging practice, and deduct a star for wasteful packaging, even if the quality of the food was great (make it clear that it’s because of the packaging).
• Sign a petition or campaign for new regulations in your area. Upstreamsolutions.org has developed a national reuse network with more than 80 organizers working in 20 states that you can join. They’ve even developed a model reusable foodware ordinance which they’ve helped pass versions of in seven cities with more than 1m residents and 8,000 restaurants.
• Join one of the reusable dishware programs mentioned above. Usually they’re not just a service, but an entire community striving to transition the world towards reusable packaging. And they’d love to have you on board, whether you live in that city or not!

There’s still some way to go before we can all enjoy our favorite takeout meals 100% guilt- (=waste-) free. But even during COVID-19 there are some steps we can take to reduce the takeout waste now, and push the transition to reusable packaging in the future.

Here’s how The Overbrook Foundation breaks down how we could get to almost zero waste from takeout. As you can see, the key lies in pushing for 80% reuse:

How do you reduce takeout waste? Any tips to add? Please let me know in the comments. Stay safe and take care, cheers, Bettina.