Pouring out into the oceans, single-use products harm marine wildlife by causing marine pollution, leach harmful chemicals into the environmental and contribute to greenhouse gases when breaking down in landfills. Despite interesting business initiatives such as DeliverZero, the private sector can’t bring reusables mainstream on their own. Cities can thus play a supportive key role, mainly by building a more robust reuse system through regulation and public partnerships.

More than 70% of Americans report ordering takeout or delivery one to three times a week – resulting in hundreds of billions of single use products, mostly plastic boxes that don’t or can’t get recycled.

To answer the issue of takeout packaging waste, Lauren Sweeney and her two partners launched in November 2019 the DeliverZero website, where people could place takeout orders that would arrive in reusable boxes instead of the standard disposables. The restaurants dispatch their food in sturdy green polypropylene containers furnished by DeliverZero, which can be returned, washed, and reused 1000 times apiece. Customers can drop off boxes at any DeliverZero restaurant, or hand them to the courier who brings the next meal to their door. Most of the times, restaurants pay for reusable boxes at competitive rates, and pass some cost on to the customer in the form of fees or directly in the price of food. The company only takes a commission that tends to be between 5% and 20% of sales. 

Alongside business cases, local governments can impose a small tax on disposables to fund new return kiosks and dishwashing facilities or support fledgling companies. For instance, the city of Boulder partnered with RepEATer, a reusable takeout container program, in exchange of grant funding and helping new restaurants and diners. Cities can also restrict or ban single-use plastics.

Initially limited to a few restaurants in one Brooklyn neighbourhood, the app now includes more than 130 restaurants. As return rates tend to be high, their progress expanded to other major US cities such as Seattle, San Diego, and even on the Hawaii island of O’ahu. Over their lifetimes, reusable containers create lower greenhouse gas emissions and use less energy and water than single-use containers, even after dishwashing.

Photo by Cloris Ying on Unsplash