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Dish the Dirt: 5 Ways to Find Out How Eco-Friendly Your Local Takeaway Is

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Takeaways have seen a surge in popularity over the past year. Pubs and restaurants were required to close their doors to the public during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, but serving takeaway food and drinks has helped all kinds of businesses survive and thrive during lockdown.

Companies like Just Eat, Deliveroo and UberEats have made it more efficient than ever for city dwellers to get their takeaway of choice delivered right to their door. But as Brits become more inclined to order in instead of prepare their own meals, there’s an environmental cost to consider.

Is Your Local Takeaway Acting Responsibly? 

To find out whether or not your local takeaway is doing business in a way that protects the environment, keep an eye out for a few key indicators: 

 

Delivery Method

Food and drinks businesses located in city centres use third-party delivery services like Deliveroo and UberEats to make delivering their meals simple. It makes perfect business sense to pay a monthly fee to take the hassle out of arranging home deliveries, but these companies don’t stipulate that their delivery personnel need to use eco-friendly modes of transport. 

Deliveroo’s rider requirements simply ask that they have their own vehicle, the necessary safety equipment and insurance for their chosen mode of transport. UberEats’ courier guidelines are similar, so you have no guarantee that your food will be delivered in the most eco-friendly way possible. The good news is that most deliveries are usually made by bicycle, and some delivery drivers use electric or hybrid cars that are well-suited to driving in cities, but you have no guarantees that this will be the case.

Photo by Rowan Freeman on Unsplash

Food Wastage

One-third of all food produced globally is wasted, but apps like TooGoodToGo help food businesses reduce food wastage by offering customers surplus food and drinks at heavily discounted prices. Not only does this mean that you can save money on your next takeaway, but it also helps to make use of all the dishes that a restaurant has prepared, minimising food waste. Any food and drinks business can sign up, so check to see if your local pub, restaurant or food outlet offers tasty discounts that will help you preserve the planet’s resources.

Menu Size 

Extensive menus could mean more food wastage since more varied ingredients are required to make such an array of dishes. If people only order the restaurant’s most popular dishes, less popular menu options that require perishable ingredients won’t be prepared, and the ingredients will expire and need to be thrown out.

But, this isn’t to say that all food businesses with sizable menus aren’t eco-friendly. Many restaurants aim to have dishes that use as many of the same ingredients as possible, reducing the possibility of wastage and making their business more profitable as a result.

Takeaway Packaging

Checking if your local takeaway uses eco-friendly food packaging before placing your order can greatly benefit the environment. With more recyclable, biodegradable and home-compostable packaging becoming widely available, synthetic packaging is falling out of favour. Most food outlets — great and small — are adopting eco-friendly solutions to package their takeaways.

To make matters worse, studies have proven that plastic packaging is harmful to your health, not just the environment. Cheap plastic packaging can leak out dangerous chemicals into your food when heated to high temperatures. So think twice before you reheat last night’s takeaway if it arrived in plastic containers instead of something non-toxic like a bagasse bowl or an eco-friendly Kraft box.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Dietary Options

When choosing your next takeaway, consider the menu options as well as the menu size. Vegan and vegetarian dishes are typically more eco-friendly than menu options that contain animal products, so you can cut your carbon footprint by ordering from a 100% vegan or vegetarian food outlet. Meat requires more water to produce than any other foods, and it also has many other negative implications for the environment too, but it still makes for some tasty dishes, so this is purely a matter of customer preference.

Ordering Your Next Takeaway the Eco-Friendly Way

All of these factors can help you decide how environmentally friendly your local takeaway is, but it’s worth taking each point with a pinch of salt. One food outlet might only sustainably sourced ingredients but use a diesel-chugging van to make their deliveries. A restaurant may have a vast menu but use nothing but eco-friendly packaging to deliver your food order. 

All in all, it’s worth doing some research and considering the points above before you order in to ensure that your takeaway of choice doesn’t leave a sour taste.

Header image by Anna Hill on Unsplash

About Gina Caro

Gina is a content creator and award-winning blogger. Her aim is to help you live a more sustainable & simple life.  Her blog covers zero waste, minimalism, wellbeing & thrift. She currently lives in Cornwall with her partner, two kids and Charles the dog. 

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