Zero Waste Restaurant Takeout

 

Take out food containers are mostly trash and cannot be recycled due to mixed materials and contamination. The good news is that it is legal and super easy to get zero waste takeout from most ANY restaurant in California that can serve onto its own reusable plates!! This way you can get your food to eat at home on real plates with real cutlery and not create any trash. Read on to learn how!

In the picture above I am picking up a pizza in as Zero Waste way as possible from Jake's of Sunnyvale -- the pizza goes into an aluminum pizza container I made from two 20" pizza pans. The paired set of aluminum pans then goes into a reusable pizza bag that keeps the pizza warm -- watch out, a fresh pizza makes the aluminum pans very hot (and sterile)!  I bike it all home in my covered all purpose bike trailer. I use a clean sheet to line the inside when carrying food.

Here is a sequence of pictures I took at a different pizzeria that show off the pans I use.

I tried to find a couple of pans with a deeper dish but ended up bending the edges of one of these very large pans to create a lid with deeper clearance. I've gotten pizza from 5 different local pizzerias dozens of times in my area and they all are very accommodating and appreciate the business. Now I just need to find a pizzeria that makes a whole wheat pizza from organic ingredients...

While my pizza pickup technique requires some specialized equipment, getting zero waste takeout from most restaurants is really pretty easy. Below is one important tip, one important factor, and three simple options to getting zero waste takeout from just about any restaurant.

Important tip: always call ahead to make sure the restaurant in question can handle your zero waste option even if you have picked up from them before. There is staff turnover and you don't want to be embarrassed or disappointed. This is also a great marketing opportunity for zero waste!

The one important factor is the restaurant MUST NOT be a typical fast food restaurant that only serves into its own disposable containers. A restaurant that normally serves onto its own reusable plates is key plus local restaurants (not chain restaurants) are the best and more accommodating.

The three simple options are:

1. The restaurant serves its food onto its own plates and puts them on a table where the customer can use utensils and/or their own spatula to transfer the food to their take home reusable containers.
2. The restaurant takes your reusables and washes them thru its high speed commercial dish washing machine then serves into your containers.
3. The restaurant has some other safe and cross contamination free mechanism to get food into your container -- like simply dropping it in.

For food other than pizza, we use standard polyethylene quart size deli containers to get take out Chinese, Indian, and others instead of the using disposable cardboard/plastic or disposable plastic clamshell containers. For other restaurants that use clamshell disposable containers, we use a variety of other Tupperware style containers made of polypropylene. Polyethylene and polypropylene plastics are the safest to use with food, don't break easily (like when carrying by bike), easy to clean, and are also somewhat recyclable.

Remember to tell the restaurant you don't want any disposable condiments, napkins, or plasticware. It is amazing how they automatically toss all this trash into their bags. If you do need condiments, bring some small containers to hold these waste free. 

Hope you find these tips useful and are able to get zero waste takeout too! 

If you like this article, please also visit my Zero Waste website at ZeroW.org and consider joining or donating to the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition. Even if you don't bike, they do more to reduce waste than most any other organization around.

December 2020 Update:

I forgot to include links to the laws covering consumer provided containers. Please see:

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200AB619

and

https://thespoon.tech/new-california-law-sets-protocol-for-reusable-food-and-drink-containers/

Also, I generously tip restaurants that allow me to pick up food in a zero waste manner.

Finally, my mom made some cushy cozies for my 1 quart wide mouth mason jars so I can now carry these jars safely on my bike without breaking them. I used this new system (along with some silicon cozies as well to be extra safe) to get takeout from The Gurkha Kitchen in Sunnyvale. Yay!