Eco-guilt of food delivery services
For busy office workers, especially those whose offices are located in areas without many nearby eat-out options, it is not uncommon to rely on food delivery for lunches you couldn’t prepare the day before, or when you missed the lunch bus due to a long conference call, or when deadlines eat into the usual dinner hour.
During our new reality today, with so many people stuck at home, the attraction of ordering food delivery services might be even greater. Compared to bulk buying groceries to last for a week or even a month, ordering food delivery from time-to-time is simply the best solution for many.
Cost aside, one thing that bothers the environment-conscious but heavy-users of food delivery services, are the ever-accumulating thin plastic lunch boxes, which we feel bad about throwing away afterward. We wash them and stack them somewhere in the corner of the kitchen, trying to use them for other food storage. More and more and more of them.
What would be a better way to get ready-to-consume drinks and foods, without adding even more single usage plastics into the ecosystem? This is the question that occupies many people.
Many may remember the canteen days, at school or work – or if you’re too young to have experienced that this could be at some food courts or at IKEA – where we get food served in washable and reusable plates and meal trays, with washable and reusable cutlery.
From the business side, many have invented ways to reduce their plastic use. For instance, Starbucks has been offering discounts to people who bring their tumblers since 1985, and more recently they also offer reusable cups. And many other food places are also happy to serve the takeaway in your lunch box if you bring it to them.
But in the case of food delivery, how do we tackle this problem? How much is the “plastics guilt” stopping people from ordering more food deliveries and choose other alternatives instead?