Is there such a thing as a responsible and environmentally friendly take-out container?
I work at a restaurant in the city and much of our business is retail to-go. Personally, I've always hated plastic take-out containers. We use them and I'm looking for alternatives. We need something elegant yet cost-effective and portable. Reusable would be great but plastic is really getting lame. I'm tired of contributing to overconsumption of oil and petroleum based products and I would love suggestions on where and how to change this in our restaurant.
Add a comment:
Previewing your comment:
HTML Hints
Some HTML is OK: <a href="URL">link</a>, <strong>strong</strong>, <em>em</em>
Comment Guidelines
Post whatever you want, just keep it seriously about eats, seriously. We reserve the right to delete off-topic or inflammatory comments. Learn more at our Comment Policy page.
If you see something not so nice, please, report an inappropriate comment.
Start Talking!
Need a question answered? Have advice to share? Start a Talk topic now!
Sign up to get your questions answered and share advice.
12 Comments:
You might want to check out Excellent Packaging and Supply. They're distributors of compostable and biodegradable food-service products made from materials like sugarcane residue, corn starch, and potato starch. I don't how affordable they are, but seems like an option worth checking out. I imagine they aren't the only distributor in the business either.
Alaina Browne at 3:44PM on 02/20/07
I've been seeing a lot more biodegradable products in the bay area. I think it's just a question of giving vendors a choice and making it economically in their interest to use them. Until the Mom and Pop fast food places can afford the corn starch plastics, we're still going to see poetroleum based containers filling up landfills.
kitchenbea at 4:44PM on 02/20/07
My local Mexican place uses foil pans with paperboard/foil lids. I love them and use them several times before throwing them away.
One of the restaurants I used to work at used paperboard boxes. They were sort of like short and very wide Chinese food boxes. They recycle, but you can't reuse them.
Calichef at 9:31PM on 02/20/07
Excellent Packaging and Supply is the best site I've found so far, too. Thank you for making a move to initiate this kind of thing in your workplace! Finally our local health food store (an independant, not one of the chains) is using the corn based take-out 'plastic'. When I worked at the National Dairy Council a long time ago, we got a fax about a scientist who had created a biodegradable plastic kitchen wraps made out of milk proteins. I haven't seen it on the market yet though, and that was 15 years ago...but the corn products seem great. Maybe that's what they'll end up doing with all the GMO corn that everyone has stopped buying !
june2 at 11:32PM on 02/20/07
In my hometown we are famous for our french frie trucks along our beautiful beaches and water front, we have a tone of them here. Alot of places serve the essentials with the fries; battered fish, or burgers - you name it. All the food comes in the those french frie paper containers. Easy on the enviroment, the container doesn't upset us - as long as the food is good.
Lilartist at 10:28AM on 02/21/07
A bunch of restaurants in the bay area and boston area have started using these flat (about 2" deep by 10-12" in diameter) opaque bowls with clear plastic lids from Newspring, called Versatainer. They are still plastic but we save them all and use them all the time for storing leftovers and taking food to work and on planes and what not. The empty ones also stack really well. They're also microwave and dishwasher safe
DM at 2:15PM on 02/21/07
a few local greasy spoons around here, Montreal, serve their hotdogs in cardboard little trays, hamburger in non-waxed paper, fries in paper bags and the actual take out containers are cardboard boxes as well... the only thing non-biodegradable they haven't figured out is something to hold poutine in...
grubnoise at 2:45PM on 02/21/07
biopak from GSD packaging
http://www.ecoproducts.com/Business/food_services/food_containers/fs_containers_paper_food_pack.htm
i love 'em, but can't afford 'em. foil with flat lids is cheaper, sadly (and oddly) enough.
my restaurant does a lot of take out/delivery. i'm about to get my liquor license, and as soon as the extra money rolls in i'll spring for the biopak.
they're beautiful, elegant, THEY'RE MADE OF PAPER, they stack well ... but they're expensive.
suzy at 1:17PM on 02/24/07
There are many good suggestions in the above comments, but something that needs to be recognized is that nothing biodegrades in modern landfills. The stuff just sits there. To properly biodegrade a corn-based or sugar-cane-based take out container requires a large scale composting process like those use by municipalities for green waste (grass clippings, shrub prunings, etc.). Of course, there is an environmental benefit to using a take-out box made of plants instead of petroleum.
See this post at Growers and Grocers (written by me) for some of the complexities and links to more coverage of the topic.
Marc at 7:10PM on 02/24/07
Wow. Thanks for all the great resources. Marc, you have a great point, which I've also thought about. My take on it is, you have to do something and you have to start somewhere. If we can recycle through reuse that is a really great start, but one of my major ethical concerns is replacing plastics with similar "compost able" materials. We are surrounded by oil by-products and the quicker we move to replacement, renewable products, the less angst, pain and perhaps fewer wars we'll have over the scarcity of resource.
I had a roommate back in Texas that once made a comment, "Do you think it wastes more energy and resources to recycle? I mean if you think about it, first you have to wash the stuff, then transport it again and then melt it down somewhere. Isn't that worse than building a big mound somewhere, which just require the fuel of transport?"
All things to think about. Me, I want composting in NYC. I worked in Berkeley, CA for a bit and was ecstatic about their composting program. But we are talking about Berkeley. It proves it can be done when everyone gets on the same page.
Let's start at it folks...
angrywayne at 9:35PM on 02/26/07
I've just started to look at biodegradeable environmentally friendly take out containers, and I think its great. But, I need a company who is going to make them funky (with my logo and color)... I've been searching and searching... has anyone seen anything?
Shoobs at 3:28PM on 04/07/07
I totally agree that restaurant's should look at how much waste they are producing when they serve their customers food.
Shoobs, there is a company called NaturoPack (http://www.naturopack.org/index.html) that offers Sustainable Packaging.
KAM9232006 at 12:35PM on 04/12/07