Facts: Food delivery disposables in India

admin Comments 0 June 1, 2021 Uncategorized

“What is right is often forgotten by what is convenient.”

We all live in a luxurious world. A luxury where, we don’t even need to move from your place to eat food, just a tap, and voila, your food is served. Behind convenience, we have forgotten to do what is right. No No, I am not suggesting that we cook our food. Definitely food delivery is convenient, tasty, and with many healthy options available, why not?!

But, here is an answer for why not. There is only one, but the solid reason why you should not be ordering food. It is Plastic pollution. The amount of plastic pollution that comes in with every order, at this rate we are leading in destroying our earth. Thankfully, every problem has a solution. And the solution is Aecoz Paper containers.

In this article, we shed some light on two big is this food service packaging industry, thereby how big is the plastic pollution.

Market overview:

The online food delivery market in India is expected to grow at ~30.55% per year. It is expected to cater to ~300 million people by 2024. There are many online food delivery platforms and many more is expected to rise. ~63% of the overall users are millennial which only suggests that this market is the future.

Companies like Zomato, Swiggy are restaurant aggregators and accept online orders. Many stand-alone online ordering companies like KFC, Domino’s, Pizza hut, many more companies promote healthy food like Eat.fit, khichdi_experiments.

Growing customer needs giving birth to many companies with different menus catering to the demand.

What do all of these online food companies have in common? The takeaway or delivery disposables.  Let us have a look at the statistics of these food delivery disposables.

The kind of plastic waste generated depends on demographics and area to area. It has a lot to do with the cities also. Here is a small chart that depicts the plastic waste generated by the online food industry alone.

With the growing business, plastic pollution is bound to increase, unless restaurants start using the alternatives. India is currently disposing 14 million tons annually and it is estimated to grow to 25 million tons by 2025.

How is the change possible?

Knowing about the adverse effects of plastic pollution, here are some of the steps taken by the government for food delivery and some of the steps that can be taken by the individuals.

 The government has announced single use plastic ban from 2^nd October 2019. But there is a wide gap in the implementation of this ban. Right from single use plastic bags to single use plastic containers, all are being used to the maximum in food delivery without any effect on this ban. 

When we spoke to some of the restaurants owners, we got a response saying, we will not change to eco-friendly containers for 2 reasons. One, they are costly, and second, we will implement them only when we get strict government orders. When we further probed them and asked, cost should not be a problem, because you charge your customers anyway. But here the shocking fact was, the restaurants are charging hefty amount for the customers and making a profit on these plastic disposables also. It has become another income for them.

For example: Hotel 1, charges 5 rs as packaging charges for food delivery, he is procuring the plastic food containers at 2.5 rs. So, every delivery he is making 100% profit. So, Hotel 1 will never shift to the alternative, unless it is imposed as a ban by the government orders.

 In these scenarios do we even stand a chance to wait for the change to happen?

It becomes a moral responsibility or obligation for the people to stick out their neck and do the things necessary to protect our own future generation.

A simple step of writing a review to the restaurants on their food delivery is a perfect start. Voicing your opinion on the need of reducing use of plastic, asking for paper soup bowls, paper packaging, or eco friendly alternatives when placing an order for food delivery is one of the simple steps can be done by each and everyone of us.

Go ahead and start the change. Every voice counts, every opinion counts. Write reviews for every restaurant using plastic packaging. Change starts with you.

Read on: Dos and Don’ts of restaurant food delivery.