So, what are the options to replace single-use, disposable food containers? Well, we have concepts like recycling and composting. Both of these alternatives have great challenges, however. Recycling, which has been touted as the solution to the plastic pollution problem, really has generally failed to be the ‘go-to’ solution for the crisis. There are many factors underlying this unfortunate fact. Firstly, plastic is very difficult to recycle, when compared to other materials, such as glass, paper, aluminum and steel. The basic issue is that there are thousands of different types of plastic materials that fall broadly into 7 categories. Of those 7 categories, only two of them are generally considered recyclable. There are also an innumerable number of colorants and additives to plastics that cannot be comingled for recycling. Additionally, plastic is frequently contaminated with the very substance it once contained- think motor oil or weed killer. While some sorting is done mechanically and with other techniques, much recycling still requires visual inspection and hand sorting. It is virtually impossible to sort the trillions of pieces of plastic discarded every year- at an ever-accelerating pace. As a consequence, we recycle only about 9 percent of our plastic waste.
We also have seen the rise of compostable ‘bio-plastics.’ What are they? They are plastic polymers made from corn, sugarcane, bamboo, and potato starch. These are made into food containers, cutlery and other foodservice ware. These plastics require more energy than traditional plastics to produce, and require significant amounts of land and water to grow the agricultural products used in their production. Additionally, a significant amount of pollution is produced from the processing these agricultural products. An important point is that compostable does not mean biodegradable. If these containers are left in the environment (i.e. a landfill, the ocean, or the side of the road) then they act just like plastic and may take hundreds or thousands of years to decompose, and when they do, they release methane, a very potent greenhouse gas. If they are incinerated, they release CO2 into the environment. They must be separated from traditional plastics and transported to an industrial composting facility where the process takes place. This process is labor-intensive and requires carefully controlled temperature, moisture and oxygen levels. Depending on how well the facility operations are managed, these facilities can be a significant source of methane emissions and air pollution from the release of particulate matter and volatile organic compounds.
Recycling and composting may make us feel better about throwing something away, but they still perpetuate our addiction to single-use items and throw-away culture. They do nothing to change behaviors to more sustainable long-term adaptive responses to our limited and finite resources.
So, we turn to reuse. Reuse is not a new concept! We’ve all seen the images of the milkman picking up empty milk bottles at the doorstep and exchanging them for full ones. Those milk bottles were sent back to the dairy where they were sanitized and refilled to be reused. Deposit return systems for soda bottles and other goods were also very popular, and the defacto standard in the early to middle part of the last century. It was only during the mid-century when ‘throwaway culture’ started, that single-use cartons and bottles were developed as ‘convenient’ and less costly alternatives to their sturdy and reusable counterparts.
We now see the true hidden costs of that folly.
We currently see many use cases of reuse when it comes to containers of all sorts. Medical gas cylinders, beer kegs, euro-boxes, pallets, and many others used to contain and transport items complete their missions and are then reused, every day. The time has come to apply these tried and true principals to takeout and food delivery, as well as institutional food service.
According to recent studies, the average distance traveled of a food delivery order is between 3.8 and 5.5 miles. We can do this.
There are nearly 1 trillion individual pieces of disposable food ware and packaging used by US restaurants and food service businesses annually. Twenty-one percent of this is for on-site dining and a full seventy-nine percent is for take-out and delivery. Additionally, 24 billion dollars is spent by these restaurants and food- service businesses on disposables each year.
Reuse has been extremely well-studied and validated and Life Cycle Analyses (LCA’s) have demonstrated the clear benefit of reusable food service ware. With respect to standard clamshell containers, reusable clamshells generally outperform their single use competitors after only 3-39 uses.
One perception of the superiority of single-use food service ware stems from the notion that it is deemed more cost-effective than reusable items. However, data from hundreds of case studies shows that transitioning from single-use to reuse for on-site dining always ends up saving money – 100% of the time. And that’s after accounting for any capital costs for purchasing or leasing additional dishwasher capacity and any added labor costs.
