China Offers Lesson in How to Cut Plastic Waste from Food Delivery | Hacker News Reader

China Offers Lesson in How to Cut Plastic Waste from Food Delivery

wsj.com

44 pointslxm62 comments

As someone who lives in Shanghai I know that this is patently false. Yes, the apps do have an option to choose if you want cutlery. However, the restaurants you order from will always throw cutlery packets in regardless of your choice.

The reason is that sometimes customers forget that they need cutlery, or click the box by accident, or the person preparing the order read it wrong. If the customer doesn't have anything to eat their food with they'll be understandably upset and leave a bad review. It's safer for the restaurant to always throw them in.

Wouldn't it be possible to give the cutlery to the delivery man, and just let them ask if the customers need it?

Too much friction. Delivery guys aren't your waiters, nor do they want to carry around plastic cutlery packets in their pockets.

I haven't talked to a delivery driver since the pandemic started, they just leave food at my door and leave. That said, I don't order delivery that much.

Different restaurants have different cutlery. They're not fungible because some might be cuisine specific (eg. asian style spoons vs regular spoons for ramen), or premium restaurants might go for more premium cutlery.

I can understand doing this in case it's a hotel address but one would assume that only a miniscule number of residences or offices wouldn't have cutlery.

Lazy people unfortunately like disposable cutlery, and overstate the number of people eating to get extras...

Don't most people have dishwashers? With a dishwasher using real cutlery is almost as easy as using disposable ones, plus you get to use real cutlery rather than the flimsy plastic ones.

Most people in China (especially lower to middle class) do not have dishwashers. In fact a fair amount of younger people living in Shanghai don't even have a kitchen - they only eat delivery and never cook.

I also feel like there is a higher amount of packaging in general, both for takeaway and groceries. I'm looking at you, plastic bags and pastries with plastic trays and second layers of shrink wrap.

Even if you eat in, there's the restaurants that outsource cleaning of tableware, resulting in shrink-wrapped cups, bowls etc. (For the confused westeners, found this picture: https://i1.wp.com/countryandahalf.com/wp-content/uploads/201...)

>Even if you eat in, there's the restaurants that outsource cleaning of tableware, resulting in shrink-wrapped cups, bowls etc. (For the confused westeners, found this picture: https://i1.wp.com/countryandahalf.com/wp-content/uploads/201...)

Even if you're shipping dishes offsite for them to be cleaned, there's no real reason why they need to be individually shrinkwrapped. I suspect the reason for the shrinkwrap is to assure customers that the dishes are clean and haven't been contaminated. If that's the reason getting rid of the shrinkwrap is going to be non-trivial, because it's something that customers value very highly.

Maybe use a biodegradable paper wrap instead?

Or, old-school cellophane which according to Wikipedia is biodegradable and compostable.

This exact thing also happens in the US. We have restaurants which give the option already (although it's not common). They (around me) also add cutlery about half the time even if requested not to.

Washington state made it mandatory that single use cutlery is opt in only. I’ve not heard anyone really complain much. I’m glad to not have to throw all that stuff away, always seemed needlessly wasteful. Probably slightly improves margins at restaurants. Single use plastic bags are also largely gone, etc.

Do you mind if I reach you out to ask some questions, I'm moving to Shanghai soon.

Sure, happy to help

Mandatory reminder that this narrative of "individual impact" was created and pushed by oil companies to shift blame from them to consumers.

And is happily endorsed by almost every single company so they can continue to harm the environment and us without any restrictions.

And this is happily endorsed by almost every internet slackitvist so they can continue living their polluting lifestyles (eg. driving their SUVs) without feeling guilty.

And this is happily said by Internet slacktivists to try and hold themselves in a higher esteem to others while still polluting AND giving corporations free ability to frack and spill oil everywhere. Truly a guiltless individual.

I'm somewhat sympathetic to this argument when it's something like plastic bottles or whatever, because goods have to be packaged in something, and environmentalists who want alternatives are forced to use plastic because it's simply not profitable for companies to offer alternatives. However, in this case that logic doesn't apply. Your decision on whether to get cutlery or not directly impacts whether the amount of plastic being generated, at least in theory.

I wonder if this focus on plastic waste was created by oil companies to distract people from climate change. Solving climate change depends on solving pollution of greenhouse gases mainly from burning fossil fuels. People seem to conflate any pollution with climate change.

It is important to keep plastic waste out of the oceans and other places. But I'm not sure if that can't be solved by making sure they get thrown away. There is plenty of space for landfills. Plastic in landfill is carbon neutral. There is energy in making plastic, but there is energy in making the alternatives and from the price, plastic likely uses less.

The other thing is that for climate change, plastic is a pretty small part of the problem, 2% of global emissions. Like it is more important how the restaurant is heated and cooled and how all the customers got there, than what the utensils are made of.

Single-use plastic cutlery should be a paid item, not a tick box. This would greatly discourage customers from requesting cutlery just because it's free.

100% - just like plastic bags. Either way we are all paying for the cost as that is spread into the price for everyones food.

When restaurant apps here make it paid, workers put them in anyway because it’s not worth upset customers who can’t eat without them and forgot to ask

Doesn’t really work. Plastic bags are paid in CA and they are still littered all over the place. Most clerks don’t even charge you the ten cents or whatever. If you want them gone you make them illegal and force biodegradable options that are more expensive to now be the only option on the marketplace.

Anytime a tax does not sufficiently reduce the action it is supposed to reduce, it just means the tax is too low.

Doesn't change the fact clerks don't always bother to add the tax. Hell, I suspect increasing the tax would make them add it even less

You can move the tax up to more auditable levels, like manufacturers or importers.

Bad comparison. You pick up bag because you don't have anything else to carry it.

You pick cutlery only if you explicitly don't have it (like eating in car or sth). Normal cutlery is far more convenient than the plastic garbage so you rarely need it when ordering food to apartment.

With exception being chopsticks but those are wood not plastic anyway.

Never underestimate mankind's capacity for laziness.

I've met a fair number of people who use paper plates, plastic cups, and plastic cutlery exclusively at their homes just to avoid washing dishes.

Then throw in disposable wooden cutlery. Plastic should not be free.

My partner and I actually had an argument over this.

We were having some difficulty getting to a dish cleaning consensus, and her solution was "Fine. We'll just use paper plates."

To her, that was a solution. To me, it was insanity.

All this handwringing about the plastic cutlery. If you are against it just make it illegal and have the local restaurant wholesalers stock biodegradable options instead. The problem will be solved within a few months. This check mark ism doesn’t really work in practice because its easier for the restaurant to just put in the plastic with every order.

I'm all for minimizing plastic cutlery waste but seeing how terrible paper straws are I can only imagine how annoying it would be to try and use a paper knife and fork. or eating soup with a paper spoon that flops apart halfway through the meal.

also, down with the checkmarxists!

Around here (Ireland) disposable cutlery is almost all wooden these days

Quite a few of the (well not many these days) conferences I attend that want to appear environmentally aware (yes, I know) use the biodegradable disposable cutlery. It's perfectly fine.

There are commercially compostable PLA options for cutlery commonly available even in (US) supermarkets. That seems preferable?

apparently "compostable" plastic are only compostable in industrial composters. If they're on the ground they still stick around for years.

Yes, that's true in some cases, but is a reasonable compromise in my personal opinion.

https://archive.ph/vgeHw

Yes, plastic waste should be limited, but some of the worst examples is McDonald's (here in Europe) replacing plastic straws and ice cream spoons with their "paper and wood" versions. I absolutely hate the taste of paper straws. I'd much rather pay for multiuse straw. The problem is they don't sell them at McDonald's and by the time I'm there it's too late to order online.

Order some washable metal straws and keep them in your car. You only have to remember to replinish the car

Most people in Europe don't drive cars, but otherwise yeah your point of keeping them on hand is still valid.

Interesting, I prefer the paper ones. That being said, McDonad (in USA) has removed the straws completely. They kinda want you to crack your teeth with the ice. It's a good thing I dropped soda drinks for good now.

> I'd much rather pay for multiuse straw

Buy and bring your own reusable straw dude. They make them collapsible and easy to carry.

Yes, that's kinda obvious isn't it? And yet I haven't done it in over a year since they introduced the "paper and wood". Why? Because no one sells them where I could buy it in person, and it seems extremely wasteful to order a $1 product online and pay $5 in shipping especially that I go to McDonald's once every 2~3 months or even less now as I hate these paper straws.

So what is the real solution? To order one online, then remember to take it with on this extremely rare occasion I go there? Vs They could just stock these right there and sell them for $3?

However, I'm on the lookout for one. Every time I go to get gas/petrol. Every time im in a supermarket etc. If I saw one I'd get it, but physical shops it seems are a thing of the past except for the most basic of necessities. I might give in and just order a bag of them online and give them out to friends & family.

Why not just buy a multiuse one then and keep it with you if it’s that much of an issue for you?

I use GrubHub and for years, I've unticked the cutlery box. Well, I managed to amass a significant stockpile of various cutlery packages, faster than I could use them. However, something changed in recent months; restaurants stopped including them altogether, and of course I had to dip into my stockpile to use a set, and now I've run out. Except I have a lot of loose spoons available, ironicaly I have a sealed box of plastic spoons which I ordered awhile ago, too. So I have almost no forks; I couldn't even find a spork when I wanted one; it's going to be like an Alanis Morrisette song all up in here.

I usually order two drinks at a time, and so they send me two straws every time. But I'm only one person, so I reuse the one straw, which means I amass plastic straws at an alarming rate. There's no end in sight for that.

Plastics aren't good to eat with because of microplastics, why not just have a set of steel cutlery on hand? It's easy to wash.

No. This is not tech support to troubleshoot my eating habits. Thank you for your interest.

Make a sandwich instead of ordering once a year and you will amass the amount of funds necessary to buy some metal cutlery

Japan had this figured out with Soba delivery that uses real dishes: https://youtu.be/z5jJ9LTlEp4

Japan at this point has so much plastic for everything it's crazy. I know the residents "recycle" it (burn it) but it's still amazing to see everything individually wrapped multiple times, or things that don't need wrapped, wrapped again.

We also do the same. But until recently we first sold and shipped it to china. Both the plastic that could be recycled and the plastic that can’t be recycled.

This doubles the workload of delivery drivers.

It's much better roughly everyone to just have people pay for plastic utensils.

This is a very small minority. The vast majority of japan uses a lot single use plastic. Each item being individually wrapped in most cases.

Eh most services in Spain had done this for ages. You have to specifically select cutlery to have it added.

Same in the UK. Honestly, even same in the US since COVID, in most cases. A lot of jurisdictions in the US have even made it illegal to send out utensils unless they're explicitly requested.

In the US I sometimes see a check box for cutlery but sometimes they ignore it and give it to you anyway.

I have the opposite problem, especially in California. I'll be staying in a hotel and need cutlery, but even though I've checked the box, I won't receive any with my order.

wait delivery apps there give plastic cutlery? why?

that's never been a thing at any delivery service ive ordered. Seems disgustingly wasteful. Who is even getting a delivery to a place that doesnt have cutlery?

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