Photo Credit: Marshall Astor – Food Pornographer
Take out meals are usually served with a side order of plastic cutlery and various condiments in plastic packets. Around 39 billion pieces of disposable cutlery end up in American landfills every year. Restaurant reviewers rarely waste any of their precious time talking about the environmental impact of the meal.
My time is less precious, so I am writing this post this morning and adding a couple of links that will help people cut down on the amount of plastic that they waste when ordering late night takeout.
Tell your favorite restaurateur about Vegware™ biodegradable and compostable cutlery. I haven’t had much luck finding any restaurant sites that mention this product.
New Yorkers eat a lot of takeout and they have so many choices. Here is a list of over 3,000 New York restaurants and that is just the tip of the iceberg. New Yorkers don’t have to do their own search for the most environmentally responsible take out options because EcoAgents has a campaign to bring restaurants on board what has been dubbed Eco To Go. Here is a list of participating restaurants.
If you are the type of person who orders from the same place week after week, consider taking the time to ask the staff to leave the plastic out of your order.
My most frequent takeout item is a chawarma sandwich. They put the fries right in the sandwich and it comes wrapped in a piece of butcher paper.
February 16th, 2009 at 7:46 am
Plastic bottles are a growing problem in our landfills and oceans. We felt that something needed to be done……and now.
We felt that plastics made from crops that could be producing food, wasn’t the answer. Many reports indicate that in addition to causing our food process to rise, the equipment and chemicals used to produce food based bio-fuel may be increasing pollution.
We knew that there wasn’t going to be one “fix it all” answer and began to wonder if anything was ever going to be done. The problem was growing every day, more bottles were being manufactured and more bottles were accumulating in places where we didn’t need them.
We were wondering if “Earth Friendly Bottles” would ever be available?
That’s why we decided to do our part and started ENSO Bottles. We are partnering with other companies to offer a PET plastic bottle that will biodegrade, compost or recycle.
Our bottles can be produced in a clear or colored version, however, clear version isn’t quite as clear as current PET plastic bottles but then again that’s one way to identify our earth friendly bottle.
ENSO is trying to achieve sustainability with our plastic bottles. Our goal is to make bottles that won’t have the adverse impact on our environment and are made from non food bio-fuels.
We haven’t started making them from bio-fuel but that’s high on our agenda and hopefully will be something we can offer in the future.
But for now, we offer a plastic bottle that is earth friendly…it’s just one step but if we all take just one step toward improving our planet….we will make a difference.
February 27th, 2009 at 7:33 pm
i work at a bakery/cafe with do lunch and sandwich.
its a small business in a place that isnt especially supportive of mom and pop shops. we arent the most eco-friendly i will admit. paper goods, and eco friendly things are too expensive for us to get and still survive as a business. things like that are lot easier is bigger cities, such as new york. any suggestions?
note on the fork: i always ask the customer if the need things like forks, receipts, and bags (things other places just shove at you without question)etc… so they are more aware, and im not wasting plastic or money to us.
February 27th, 2009 at 9:46 pm
Miche, it’s great that you ask the customer before giving them the extras.
There is a cultural thing here that is almost like a plastic bag is a gift from the proprietor to the customer. I have to be pretty adamant the first few times before each guy begins to understand my particular brand of crazy foreignerness.