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> Very few restaurants want to pay a premium for the deluxe eco groovy stuff, in my experience (as a customer only, but one who frequents such stores). They're

> Very few restaurants want to pay a premium for the deluxe eco groovy stuff, in my experience (as a customer only, but one who frequents such stores). They're almost like a lifestyle / branding thing to go along with organic / vegetarian / sustainable / local themed restaurants, but most don't do that and just want to keep costs down. Restaurants can be perfectly sincere (and branding isn't incompatible with sincerity), but they have tight margins. It's their customers who really have the choice, and there are very few customers willing to pay extra for the eco stuff. It reminds me of this evergreen Onion article: https://www.theonion.com/report-98-percent-of-u-s-commuters-favor-public-trans-1819565837 https://www.theonion.com/report-98-percent-of-u-s-commuters-...

solardev 2y ago
I'm not saying restaurants are insincere about it, just that it's a cost of doing business many won't (or can't) absorb. It's usually the more expensive hippie-tastic places with already-high prices (and hopefully higher margins) that can afford them. Culturally, I don't think customers would accept a choice on the matter either, like I've never seen a place offer "you can have the plastic box for free, or buy the sustainable wooden one for $2". In lieu of that, I used to bring my own reusable tupperware to the restaurants for takeout, but got a looooooot of strange looks and comments about that. What I'd really love to see is more of a "borrow a tupperware, bring back a tupperware" model where they just loan you containers. I'd only ever seen that on college campuses, not in the real world. Anyway, none of that is really the point. There's nothing wrong with fancy sustainable/reusable dishware, but something that's incrementally better and not much more costly than regular plastic is much more likely to see widespread adoption. I think the gradual phase-out of styrofoam to plastics is one such example, and cheap bioplastics of the less-biodegradable kind are more common now (though not everywhere), paperboard boxes with some wax paper/foil lining are popping up, some places are doing away with bottled plastic water in favor of water in milk-like cartons... gradual incrementalism seems to work better than revolutionary approaches in that industry.
- DFHippie 2y ago
  I'm with you. I think you should have to pay extra for containers and utensils. Make it a deposit and suddenly single-use plastic is multi-use. Or, as you say, let people provide their own container. In any case, if you charge people for the externality you will likely end up with less of it.

solardev 2y ago

I'm not saying restaurants are insincere about it, just that it's a cost of doing business many won't (or can't) absorb. It's usually the more expensive hippie-tastic places with already-high prices (and hopefully higher margins) that can afford them. Culturally, I don't think customers would accept a choice on the matter either, like I've never seen a place offer "you can have the plastic box for free, or buy the sustainable wooden one for $2". In lieu of that, I used to bring my own reusable tupperware to the restaurants for takeout, but got a looooooot of strange looks and comments about that. What I'd really love to see is more of a "borrow a tupperware, bring back a tupperware" model where they just loan you containers. I'd only ever seen that on college campuses, not in the real world. Anyway, none of that is really the point. There's nothing wrong with fancy sustainable/reusable dishware, but something that's incrementally better and not much more costly than regular plastic is much more likely to see widespread adoption. I think the gradual phase-out of styrofoam to plastics is one such example, and cheap bioplastics of the less-biodegradable kind are more common now (though not everywhere), paperboard boxes with some wax paper/foil lining are popping up, some places are doing away with bottled plastic water in favor of water in milk-like cartons... gradual incrementalism seems to work better than revolutionary approaches in that industry.

DFHippie 2y ago
I'm with you. I think you should have to pay extra for containers and utensils. Make it a deposit and suddenly single-use plastic is multi-use. Or, as you say, let people provide their own container. In any case, if you charge people for the externality you will likely end up with less of it.