
Food Delivery Apps Are Drowning China in Plastic - tysone
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/28/technology/china-food-delivery-trash.html
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symplee
Pretty soon there will be a company delivering on regular, reusable plates.
There will be a refund given if the plate is returned to the driver on the
next delivery. (Thus encouraging a second delivery...) Higher refund if the
plate is washed.

I feel like this could be an Onion article today, start-up in a year.

Or they just scoop out food onto your home plate. Like an on-demand food moped
that has buffet sized compartments - that stay fresh for a couple of hours so
the driver doesn't have to return to the shop as often. Hmm, anyone in the
food business need some more ideas?

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RodgerTheGreat
Asking customers to wash plates for your business sounds like a food safety
violation waiting to happen. I'd skip that part.

Also be sure to either make the reusable utensils/plates very visually
unappealing or factor their cost into the delivery; if you provide them as any
sort of loss-leader you may find yourself as much a provider of inexpensive
tableware as you are a provider of food.

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paxys
No one says the business can't wash the plates themselves as well.

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seanmcdirmid
In Chinese university cafeterias, you had to pay 1, 2, or 5 mao (I don’t
remember the exact amount, this was 15 years ago, probably more now anyways)
if you don’t bring your own food container to hold the food you get.

Perhaps permanent containers could be used for food delivery charges on a
deposit basis (pay money for them, get it back when they are returned, perhaps
sent back on a future delivery).

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rahimnathwani
The economic incentive needs to be large enough to matter.

When we order food deliveries, there's usually an option to specify how many
set of utensils we want. We specify zero. If there's no option, we write
something similar in the 'notes' section.

These instructions are almost always ignored. I guess it's cheaper for them to
add utensils in every order, than to spend time to read the specifics of each
order.

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Freak_NL
The feature of specifying no utensils is mentioned by one of those major
platforms in the article. It looks like they are using it to be able to claim
that they are promoting more sustainable practices, rather than actually do
something about it.

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rahimnathwani
Oh! Sorry, only skimmed the start.

The platforms themselves may have good intentions, but it's not reasonable to
expect them to enforce that with restaurants. I mean, if restaurants want to
give customers stuff for free, and customers don't complain, then it's hard to
blame the platform.

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bamboozled
I actually just go eat at restaurants because of this. It's pretty bad as a
society when going out to eat food has become difficult for some people.
Really, ordering delivery is not much else besides pure laziness.

Maybe in the case you're sick or something, sure, but for most cases going to
a restaurant isn't that difficult.

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dcsilver
Eating at restaurants all the time might be something many Americans can
afford to do, but it’s not normal for the rest of the world. I’m in the UK and
tend to eat out about once a week as a treat. That’s on the “doing well” end
of things.

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bamboozled
I didn't mean to suggest that people should be able to afford to eat out, I
meant, if you have the money to spend on a bunch of take away, then why not
just go eat at the store?

Maybe you're suggesting that take away is cheaper than eating at a store?

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dcsilver
Ah, makes sense now. Eating out usually is more expensive than getting a
takeaway delivered - maybe not a like for like on the main but it’s usually
once you add a couple of alcoholic drinks. You’ll get charged for a glass of
wine what you’d pay for the bottle at home.

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temp99990
Why just China? Wouldn’t the same be true in the US too?

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seanmcdirmid
Scales are completely different. Food delivery is a lot more ubiquitous in
China than in the USA.

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temp99990
I mean food delivery is becoming massively more popular each year w DoorDash,
UberEats, Grubhub, Postmates, etc. collectively worth tens of billions. The
trend is up and to the right. I believe in terms of annual deliveries the US
is probably smaller but not that much smaller.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Is it? It is more popular then before, but not like China. From my time living
in China, I can personally attest to the ubiquity of food delivery services at
an easily affordable price. In contrast, it just doesn’t seem to be worth it
back in the states, the service isn’t as good and it is way more expensive
than in China, it is easier to just go out.

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hombre_fatal
"Easier" is a weird word choice here. It's absolutely easier to not move from
the couch, naked in your robe, and have restaurant-quality food arrive at your
door than it is to sit down at a restaurant and fake some temporary civility
across town. No contest if you have young kids.

It's not even much more expensive since the sit-down tip is replaced with a
delivery premium. And I only tip the driver some bucks.

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mikorym
In this vein, are there any company's currently selling viable
compostable/biodegradable plastics? I know there is a big drive for straws,
but packaging of fruit, vegetables (and food) is an important target as well.

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lnsru
Many of them, but it is like 10x more expensive than regular one used today.
Biodegradable plastic is an old thing, just too expensive for us. It’s cheaper
to dump European garbage in Asia with explanation “they bought it from us”. I
am just shaking my head when reading article about German apple bags from the
Asian beaches. We are even forced here to sort our waste. Funny thing is that
bio waste goes to these expensive biodegradable bags. And then German apple
bags and all other clean(!) plastic waste go to separate bag that apparently
is recycled.

~~~
majewsky
> separate bag that apparently is recycled

This is a common misconception. The yellow bin (Gelbe Tonne) is not about
recycling at all. The point is that, in Germany, producers of packaging need
to pay a fee per packaging that goes towards disposing of the used packaging,
through the Green Dot (Grüner Punkt) system. The yellow bin is therefore paid
by them, as opposed to by consumers.

This is why the yellow bin is not being described as accepting specific
materials, it's explicitly described as accepting _packaging_ (both plastic
and paper/carton).

When you put a non-packaging plastic item into the yellow bin, it counts as an
"intelligent misthrow" (intelligenter Fehlwurf), which is one of my favorite
pieces of jargon.

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8bitsrule
I don't get it. There are excellent leakproof cardboard takeout containers
available.

They may cost a little more. Is this another example of leave a mess behind
for the future to pay for?

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sushid
I'm pretty sure the cardboard boxes you are thinking of have a layer of
plastic on them. The only cardboard boxes I've seen from to go places without
any plastic turn soggy within 30 minutes or so even without anything liquid in
them (just a poke bowl).

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culturestate
This is still a pretty good solution. The amount of plastic used is cut
dramatically, obviously, and as long as the containers are made correctly they
can still be recycled in a normal paper process.

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dwaltrip
Is cardboard that is dirtied with food oils actually recyclable? I thought
this is not the case.

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culturestate
If it's made correctly, yes. Pizza boxes aren't (because they aren't coated,
so the oil soaks in), but e.g. orange juice cartons are.

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ubercow13
Orange juice cartons are surely plastic-lined or foil-lined too though

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culturestate
Right, which is why recyclability depends on the way they're made. The PE
formulation used for things like juice cartons in the US can be broken down
when the cartons are pulped.

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nikivi
I was thinking, is it not possible to have all garbage be filtered for
plastic, not plastic before after it is collected.

This way you don’t put the burden on the people trying to ‘sort’ plastic from
non plastic. Let the machine do it with some mix of computer vision or some
other sensors. I wish to work on a startup like this because I feel this is
something that must be done if not done already.

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kangoo1707
More plastic but it's easy to clean - recycle.

At least more delivery = less traffic, less polution

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diveanon
Both of those statements are wrong.

Only 10% of all plastic is recycled.

More delivery means less people cooking for themselves at home, which means
more traffic and pollution.

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hbarka
There was a time when milk was delivered in glass bottles.

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hourislate
Well we know where some of those containers end up.

China has at least 3-6 of 10 rivers that carry 90% of plastic polluting the
Oceans.

[https://news.sky.com/story/just-10-rivers-carry-90-of-
plasti...](https://news.sky.com/story/just-10-rivers-carry-90-of-plastic-
polluting-the-oceans-11167581)

From the article:

Yangtze River, China

This was the worst offender, according to research published in the journal
Environmental Science & Technology. It carries up to 1.5 million tonnes of
plastic into the sea every year. In contrast, the Thames puts 18 tonnes of
plastic into the ocean.

Yellow River, China

After the Yangtze and the Yenisei, this is the third-longest river in Asia -
and the sixth-longest river system in the world. It flows through nine
provinces before emptying into the Bohai Sea.

Hai he River, China

This waterway connects Beijing to Tianjin and the Bohai Sea. Its annual flow
is only one-thirtieth the Yangtze's, and half that of the Yellow River.

Out of control......

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zaptheimpaler
China imported half the worlds plastic waste until 2017. No one in the west
who sells it to them has any illusions about where it goes.. since China
placed an import ban on it, undoubtedly they will sell it to someone else who
does the same thing or pollute the water themselves. Its awfully convenient to
pay someone else to do the dirty work and then turn your nose up at them.

