Here is this weeks business opportunity so someone here can become fabulously well-to-do

Our cheery prime minister is going to outlaw single use plastics in a couple of years, except he might very well eventually convince everyone in the country that he is a massive hypocrite and lose the next election...But enough Canuck floundering.

Second, apparently its a thing for waste conscious people to bring their own containers for take-out.

So, a tupperware type container, monogrammed with the name of the restaurant, and perhaps the customers name.  It would be the right size, the place could make money selling the containers, and you would be relatively confident that the container only had your germs in it.

Produce the containers, get rich.

Streetwiseguy said:

Second, apparently its a thing for waste conscious people to bring their own containers for take-out.

So, that begs the questions:  Who regulates and enforces the hygiene of the incoming reusables?  Who is to blame when a customer's container contaminates the restaurant's food?

Everything has compromises.  Everything.  And the Law of Unintended Consequences will bite you in the ass every time.

Duke said:

Streetwiseguy said:

Second, apparently its a thing for waste conscious people to bring their own containers for take-out.

So, that begs the questions:  Who regulates and enforces the hygiene of the incoming reusables?  Who is to blame when a customer's container contaminates the restaurant's food?

Everything has compromises.  Everything.  And the Law of Unintended Consequences will bite you in the ass every time.

I wonder how that relates to the coffee mug or soft drink cup that you purchase and bring back to the gas station for a refill.  They seem to get along okay with that, but maybe there's less risk with a beverage?  How does that work for Doordash and such, though?  There's a ton of takeout business that's done by those couriers and they're not going to come to your house first to transport your dishes.  And if they did, what's the environmental effect of those additional road miles?

Maybe that's where a Doordash/Grubhub could help, though:  They have the containers already, fill them for you at the restaurant, leave them with you for a deposit, and the next time they drop off you can return the dish to get your deposit back and they can send them out to be washed.  I'm sure that won't raise prices at all.

Even without the problems with byotfc's, there is still a giant market (probably) for monogrammed Tupperware. 

Hell, even just a set with each day of the week on it so people can remember when they put it in the fridge or when to take it out would be a greenmine.

Funny...

Can’t even describe the product without using another competing company’s proprietary info (Tupperware)

Nothing to see here. 

In reply to wae :

GrubHub, etc can’t supply food packaging products without being certified food prep handlers.   This requires commercial sanitary conditions (like hand washing areas, etc). Doesn’t work. 

When I had a restaurant, we had to dispose of anything that left our control. A food vendor can’t package food in containers provided by someone else. 

The alternate, of course, is to prevent the need to ban all plastics by either developing a more universal plastic that is fully recyclable OR come up with a very robust way to recycle plastics where the waste isn't put into a landfill.  

The latter can be used to clean up the tons and tons of plastic waste that is all over the world.

Where that becomes a very, very long term problem is how it eventually will break down.  Sadly, I think the most effective disposal of plastic is distillation/pyrolysis and then burning it back to CO2 and H2O.  

I dont think this will be the industry revolution that you hope it will be.

There are many non-plastic choices that already fill the market:

I am this way with Target Drive-Up. After a few months of criticizing the very concept, I'm now in love with the service. 

But, I use reusable shopping bags. As far as I can tell, the two can not work together.

We have a service here called GO Box. Most of the downtown food carts and quite a few restaurants work with them.

You get a GO Box subscription, and when you order you note that you want your stuff in one of their containers and show them your app at pickup; they scan it and it's noted that they've given you a box. When you're done, you drop it off in a drop box and scan the container, and you're credited for returning one.

GO Box handles washing them and parceling them out to vendors, paid for by your subscription.

The building where I worked when I was downtown had a drop box, as does my wife's office. They're pretty convenient. It's something a bit over $20/year. I only used it for lunches, but that was most days of the week, most weeks of the year. That's a lot of saved packaging.

I like the idea of BYOTupperware. It seals better, you can wash it, less clutter in the fridge. It's just a weird concept to get on board with...going out to eat and knowing full well in advance you will bring home leftovers. The problem is half the time I eat out, I wasn't planning to in the first place.

But I like it. It's almost like going out to the bar and coming home with a growler of beer. You just need to remember to bring the growler in the first place.

From my experience living in a place that has already banned single-use plastics, this will probably amount to nothing more than a bit of greenwashing. Single-use plastics are swapped for "biodegradeable" plastics that don't actually degrade much faster in nature but wiill degrade a lot faster in a special, energy-intensive machine which may or may not actually be in use in the recycling system, most of these new plastics never go into the recycling system in the first place, everyone declares the problem solved once and for all and gives themselves a hearty pat on the back.

GameboyRMH said:

From my experience living in a place that has already banned single-use plastics, this will probably amount to nothing more than a bit of greenwashing. Single-use plastics are swapped for "biodegradeable" plastics that don't actually degrade much faster in nature but wiill degrade a lot faster in a special, energy-intensive machine which may or may not actually be in use in the recycling system, most of these new plastics never go into the recycling system in the first place, everyone declares the problem solved once and for all and gives themselves a hearty pat on the back.

You are talking about the PLA-ish stuff that degrades above 150f?  Yeah, that's very annoying.

IMO, the solution needs to be 100% compostable (non-specialty composting).  IIRC McDonalds has committed to 100% compostable by 202x?  Many restaraunts already use all compostable stuff.  I don't see why its so difficult for others to do so?  Its more expensive, but if single use plastics are banned and everyone is operating under the same rules there is no competitive advantage to getting cheap plastic anymore.

I won't bring my own stuff purely because I cannot remember to do so.  I have my own mug and bowl at work so I don't have to use the styrofoam stuff, but I just keep them at my desk.  I know a lot of businesses have gotten rid of their single use plastic stuff, and in many cases they just have mugs or other dishes in the breakroom you are welcome to clean out and use.

In reply to Robbie :

There are people that don’t have monogrammed Tupperware?

Why not go back to bottle and container deposits like they used to. Make it once, clean it and reuse it 100s of times.

Before long, when we want to bring home some milk, we'll have to carry our milk pail to the cow.

Progress!

In reply to Toyman01 :

I like that idea. There would have to be an agreed-upon set of standard sizes for all restaurants though. 

I am somewhat OK with the ban although this hypocrite is not the person to enact it. I am still looking for the plasticy paper water bottle sort of things he and his family umm...recently ahhh...switched to. 

But we reuse our ziplock bags until they tear, we wash plastic cutlery and anytime a plastic bag comes home it gets repurposed for garbage. And even if we are not the typical Canadian users of plastics, most of the pollution comes from third world countries who use the ocean and other bodies of water as refuse dumps. Although admittedly much of that trash may come from us world leaders barging our crap to the financially desperate countries that will take it with no end plan. Good for the Philippines for showing us where at least some of our crap actually winds up.

In reply to bearmtnmartin :

One question about that third world source of plastic- how much of that is just waste that someone hoped to recycle originating from the US?  

I saw a video about the Galapagos islands where it's plastic waste is coming from South America, including the home state of Ecuador.  

It's not all from East Asia consumption.

Marginally related rant: 

More folks need to bring their own re-usable shopping bags with them and get the cashiers/baggers to use them.  It took me a long time of carrying mine around in the trunk until I succeeded in conditioning myself to remember to carry them into the store.  Now I do it all the time. 

Is there anything less useful for carrying groceries than the plastic "grocery bags" that almost all stores use by default?  Ninety percent of them have holes in them, they're flimsy as hell, and if you put your groceries on the floor of the trunk, a normal drive home will have all of the stuff scattered about and no longer in the bags.  Utterly useless.

Also, the employees that bag stuff in these plastic bags are aware of the bags' frailty, and basically put one item into one bag, and you end up carrying a berkeleyload of the damn things home with you.

On the takeout food front, I'm seeing more paper-based containers, so that's positive. 

I've always been a fan of bottle deposits. 

This is fresh in memory because the kids and I just ate there, but Chipotle has no plastic except their salsa cups and drink lids. All paper containers:

So I'm sure most companies will switch to this sort of thing. And honestly it's fine for carryout, and would bio-degrade pretty quickly. It could probably be composted, especially if it was shredded first.

How does all the wax fare during composting?

And isn't wax coating paper similar to plastic coating paper?

PS, Wally - did you get your monogrammed Tupperware from skymall too?

As far as I can tell the Chipotle paper food containers are not wax coated. The drinking cups are.

I thought Canada had a King, the guy who draws Doonsbury right? 

Wally said:

In reply to Robbie :

There are people that don’t have monogrammed Tupperware?

I read this as "mammogrammed Tupperware" and thought to myself, there's a euphemism for "artificial enhancements" I had not yet heard.