Sustainable Restaurant Resolutions

The start of the new year is a great time to think about goals for the year to come. This year, consider setting one or more sustainable restaurant New Year’s resolutions that you can work to achieve throughout the year. Reducing your waste, or even going zero waste, is a long, imperfect process, and is not something that can happen overnight. By setting a few sustainability goals for this year, it can allow you to make progress in your journey to reduce or eliminate your waste!

Tip 1 – Use the PlasticScore App!

This year, a great resolution is to leave a review of every restaurant you have eaten out at on the PlasticScore app! By leaving reviews, you can help encourage restaurants to transition away from single-use plastics toward providing reusables and more sustainable practices.

Additionally, for every review on the PlasticScore app, you earn free plastic offsets! For each review you earn 0.25 pounds of plastic offsets and can earn more offsets for referring your friends to the app, leaving comments on your review, and submitting photos! Each review helps pay for the ethical collection and disposal of low-grade plastics littering our ecosystems throughout the world, through our partnership with rePurpose. 

Tip 2 - Bring your own reusable cutlery

If you’re heading out to eat, especially to a quick/fast food restaurant, take a reusable cutlery set with you! A great reusable cutlery set contains a reusable straw, fork, knife, and a spoon. This way, you don’t need to use the plastic utensils provided by the restaurant.

There are so many great reusable cutlery kits available for purchase, many of which are typically made out of bamboo to be lighter to carry. However, you don’t need to purchase anything to make one! Simply grab some utensils you have at home, put these into a small reusable fabric bag, and you’ve got yourself a great reusable cutlery kit!

Tip 3 – Ask for no bag, if possible

Whether your ordering food online, or asking for leftovers to go, ask that the food be given in no bag, if possible. This helps reduce the amount of trash generated from takeout orders.

If you asked for no bag, but were still given one, simply leave a review on the PlasticScore app, add that into the comments section, and we’ll pass that along to the restaurant!  

Tip 4 – Try some vegetarian or vegan options!

About 26% of the world’s emissions comes from food, with more than half of that coming from animal products. One great way to reduce the number of emissions you generate is to reduce the amount of meat and/or animal products you eat. You don’t have to be a vegan or vegetarian to have an impact. Simply choosing to eat vegetarian meals a few times a week can make a huge impact! Next time you order food or dine in at a restaurant, consider choosing a vegetarian or vegan option, to help reduce waste and to try something new in the process!

Tip 5 – Ask for no napkins

Asking for no napkins is a great way to reduce waste, especially if your ordering takeout and can use reusable napkins that you have at home! Did you ask for no napkins in a to-go or delivery order, but still received napkins? Be sure to leave a comment on your review of the restaurant on the PlasticScore app to help let the restaurant know that this is something important to you! Also, leaving a comment on the review of a restaurant will earn you another 0.05 lbs of plastic offsets per review, which comes out to 0.30 lbs per review!

Tip 6 – Condiments

Condiments definitely can make a meal take great, but oftentimes these are packaged in plastic containers or packets, which are typically hard or impossible to recycle. When ordering, make sure you specify what type of condiments you want and how many you would like. That way, you only end up with the condiments you know you’re going to use! If you received too many condiments in a takeout order, consider saving the condiments for future to-go orders or even home-cooked meals. This ensures that the condiments are being used, instead of going to the landfill unopened.

Tip 7 – Reuse packaging waste

Sometimes, even with our best intentions, we still receive packaging waste in our takeout orders. Depending on the items you received, see if there might be a way to reuse some of these items. Some examples that our PlasticScore users have shared with us include, using plastic bags until unusable and then making yarn out of the plastic bags to create your own heavy-duty bag. Other suggestions include using a tin to go container to store compostable seed start containers in and water the seed starts from the container. The possibilities are endless and allow the packaging to have another life before being disposed of.