Getting restaurant meals to go often comes with a side of guilt: “Did I need to supersize? I should have saved the money and cooked at home.” And the final sting, perhaps muttered while hovering over the trash and recycling bins deciding where to toss the empty boxes: “Oh, the waste.”
Dietary and budgeting concerns notwithstanding, one way to mitigate the environmental impact (or the eco-guilt) of a takeout habit is to choose restaurants that serve their food in more sustainable containers.
“I’m a firm believer in ‘every little bit counts’,” said Sarah Currie-Halpern, co-founder of waste reduction consultancy Think Zero. “There’s 8 billion people on this planet. If even a couple million are doing something more sustainable, that’s a notch forward in the right direction.”
Of course, it’s never as easy as it seems. “One material may be worse from a greenhouse gas point of view and another material may be worse from a water-use point of view,” said Elaine Blatt, a senior analyst at the Oregon department of environmental quality (DEQ). “The bottom line is that we use too much of this stuff generally. That’s all we can say with any certainty.”
But there is some information you can use to make a delivery decision you can feel good about. Or, at least, less bad about. Here’s our (mostly) scientific ranking, from worst to best.
7. Compostable serveware
The most eco-friendly-sounding options are anything but. In fact, they’re problematic from beginning to end, and a growing scourge of sustainability experts. It requires huge amounts of pesticides, energy and water to cultivate corn and other plants for bioplastic cups or fiber-based bowls. “Some of that could be used to feed hungry people and animals rather than making packaging,” Currie-Halpern said.
“You’re growing food-like substances to make them into materials that you’re going to put other stuff in and then throw away,” Blatt said. When Oregon’s DEQ did an assessment in 2018, it found that compostable materials almost always had a greater environmental impact than the papers and plastics they were meant to replace.
Compostable material doesn’t even live up to its name: very little of it actually gets composted. Compostable serveware can’t be tossed in a backyard compost pile and many composting companies don’t accept it because they’ve found that the products don’t break down well enough. New research shows they disintegrate better than previously thought, but most people don’t have access to industrial facilities that can handle them.
Then there’s the lookalike problem. Compostable fiber containers often wind up in the recycling bin – even though they’re not recyclable – while conventional cardboard gets tossed in with food scraps. “Compostable material just confuses people,” Blatt said.
6. Some plastic and paperboard packaging
Some plastics used in food service containers, such as number 6 (polystyrene), generally are not recyclable. Nor are soft plastics, like film labels and straws, Currie-Halpern said: “If you can puncture it with a pen, that’s always going to be trash.”
The same goes for classic Chinese takeout boxes and similar containers, since they’re coated with plastic to prevent leaking. It is difficult or impossible to separate out the paper, so most places don’t bother collecting them for recycling. As Blatt says, though, recyclability isn’t always a good test of a package’s environmental impact.
5. Clear, rigid plastic boxes, cups and clamshells
Recyclability isn’t always a good indicator of environmental friendliness, since it tells you nothing about how a piece of packaging was manufactured. But among different types of plastics, those with a number 1 (PET or PETE) or 2 (HDPE) inside the chasing arrows – both of which are common in food packaging – are more valuable to recyclers than plastics with higher numbers. Widely used number 5 (polypropylene or PP) plastics are becoming more recyclable and valuable, too. This means they’re more likely to actually be recycled.
Unless they’re black. “There’s not much demand right now for black PET, so a very small percentage of collection programs nationwide will accept the material for recycling,” said Justin Gast, a materials management specialist with Oregon’s DEQ. “Unfortunately, we still see a lot of black plastic used in grocery and fast food settings.”
4. Recycled containers
While it can be difficult to compare the environmental impacts of different materials, here’s where it can be easier. Containers made from recycled materials are better than ones that aren’t. So if one says it’s made of 40% recycled content, that’s better than the same type of container that has none.
3. Aluminum boxes
The old-school foil boxes with crimped edges earn high marks for being light and widely accepted in curbside recycling pickup. Plus, Currie-Halpern added, there’s a robust market for recycled aluminum, so there’s a chance they were made with post-consumer material. The tops add a trickier dimension. Number 1 or 2 plastic lids are recyclable, whereas a cardboard lid that’s white on top and metallic on the bottom probably isn’t, by dint of being made of two materials that are impossible to separate. But focusing on disposal misses the point, Blatt stressed. How they’re made, whether their manufacture was powered by renewable energy, and the disposal options in the city or town where they’re used all factor in.
2. Paper and foil wraps, pizza boxes
Less is more when it comes to packaging. Weight matters, and lighter materials can be manufactured and transported with fewer emissions. A sandwich wrapper lined with plasticky coating or foil, which makes it difficult or impossible to recycle, is likely still better for the environment overall than a bulkier recyclable container. “It has a lot less material embodied in it and the production of that material is actually lower impact than the production of the recyclable plastic,” Blatt explained. “Just because something is labeled as recyclable doesn’t mean it’s necessarily better for the environment.” Classic pizza boxes combine the best of both attributes: they’re the right size for their contents and are recyclable virtually everywhere. (Pro tip: if your pie leaked a lot of oil, rip off the top for recycling and put the greasy half in the trash.)
1. Reusable containers
“Reusable is always your best option, no matter what,” Currie-Halpern said. Even accounting for the thicker material and water and energy needed to wash them, reusable coffee cups, salad bowls and boxes require fewer resources, produce fewer greenhouse gases and pollute the environment less than disposables, as long as they’re actually reused. The break-even point could be as little as two uses, or more than 100.
A growing number of companies in cities like San Francisco, Denver and New York are making it possible for restaurants to serve takeout and delivery meals in durable, washable, reusable containers. Large entertainment venues, such as the new Sphere in Las Vegas, and Portland, Oregon’s Moda Center, where the Trail Blazers play basketball, have begun serving drinks in returnable cups. University dining halls across the country are also making reusables the go-to for to-go.
When in doubt, throw it out
“Sometimes putting stuff in the garbage is the best place for it to go,” Blatt said, underscoring that what people do with their dirty takeout containers is not the most important consideration. The disposal of packaging is just a small part of its environmental footprint, especially compared with the enormous environmental footprint of food production.
“While it’s good to be concerned about your takeout container,” she said, “I want people who get takeout in a container to eat the food in the container and not let it go to waste.”
