• $24 billion spent yearly by restaurants and foodservice businesses on disposables,
• Nearly 1 trillion pieces or 9 million tons of disposables items are used by US restaurants and foodservice businesses (21% for on-site dining and 79% for take-out and delivery),
• $6 billion spent by businesses and city governments on solid waste management costs attributable to disposable food packaging,
• Roughly 20 billion pieces of litter are from disposable food-service packaging.

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) science has indicated that “reuses win every time” and only a paradigm shift to a reuse culture will create a sustainable solution within the food industry:

• Single-uses (of any material) waste natural resources and energy, and create unnecessary harm to the environment.
• Single-use bio-based plastics or compostable packaging are not sustainable solutions based on in-depth studies of their environmental impacts and limitations of current composting practice.
• Although some single-use materials are technically recyclable, many throw-away products in the foodservice industry are often too dirty to be recycled.
• Sorting of the recycled content is a costly issue and recycling is only a good thing when products can be made from the same materials.
• Reusable is the answer, LCA reveal that environmental break-even point (CO₂ footprint) is achieved at a very low number of cycles, some only required 2 reuses. Likewise reusable also consumes considerable less water over its lifecycle.

To solve the problem, stop “single-use throw-away” and shift to “reuse, reduce and recycle”, and this can be done with the MUST reusable containers program.

The evidences across a variety of metrics show that a reusable containers program will bring many far-reaching benefits to a food establishment and its local community. ^[6]

• Reuse significantly saves businesses foodservice packaging and waste management costs,
• Reuse increases customer and operator satisfaction,
• Reuse builds brand loyalty and is a prerequisite by environmentally responsible customers,
• Reuse can offer valuable customer behaviour data and opportunity to improve customer services,
• Reuse saves litters cleanup cost, and exemplifies business responsibility within the local communities,
• Dishwashing and labour costs for reusables are minimal or non-existent.

Documented studies at US restaurants ^[2] show that the higher upfront cost of reusable breaks even after just a few uses and then annually will save a small business and its community:

• from US$3,000 to US$ 22,000 on food packaging cost, ^[1,6]
• on waste management cost it eliminates 1300 to 2200 lbs of waste (110,000 to 225,000 disposable items)
• on litter cleanup cost, since 8 out of 10 plastic pollution pieces is from food packaging

1. Encourage customers to Bring Your Own (BYO) reusable.
2. The well proven government run deposit refund systems (DRS) mainly for the reuse of standard containers (mostly beer and beverage bottle).^[9]
3. Service companies ^[13] that collect a fee to provide and manage reusable for restaurant use. They pocket all the cost saving from reusable running their own deposit-refund schemes.
4. Restaurants offer their own reusable for a deposit, a loyalty bonus or discount. This is where the MUST deposit-refund program will help business implementing their own reusable containers.

A publication from UN Environment’s illustrates an in-depth Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) that gives us a correct understanding of the full and true impact of a selected food packaging material on the environment; for example, glass is worst than PS plastic due to the higher energy consumption in production and the heavier weight that leaves a bigger footprint during shipping and delivery ^[3].  For long-term sustainability, we rely on this type of analysis to identify the best materials for the MUST reusable containers programs.

As an example, the economic and environmental benefits in reusing a BPA-free polypropylene container was proven to be very significant ^[12]  Ecolab test of a BPA-free polypropylene ^[12] reusable container shows:

• After 2 to10 uses it becomes environmentally favourable to any single-use alternatives including compostable paper products^{[2, 12]},
• After 500 uses it eliminates that many single-use items to reduce up to 93.2% of GHG emissions and 71.7% water consumption,
• It can last up to 1000 washes when each reusable container saves us a total of 70 kg of CO₂

The cost saving over the life of the above reusable container is significant.  In fact, by charging a per-use fee for reusable equal to the current cost of single-use, third party companies ^[13] generate enough revenues from the reusable economy to supply and manage reusable containers for the restaurant industry.

1) “How to Reduce Single-use Plastics in the Food Sector” a document from C40 Cities Organisation

2) “Reuse Wins” a document from Upstream organisation

3) “Single-use plastic take-away food packaging and its alternatives” a document from UN Environment 

4) “Discover The Reuse Revolution”

5) “Set Targets for advancing towards zero waste” from C40 Cities Organisation

6)  “Reuse vs. Single-Use Economics”  a document from Upstream organisation

7) The new reuse economy, what are going on in the globe?

8) The current deposit-refund-system

9) Handling fees in current deposit refund systems

10) “Foodservice single-use products Industry Study #3774” An industry study by Freedonia, Feb 2020

11) “The dirty Truth about Disposable Foodware” A document by The Overbrook Foundation, Feb 2020

12) “Impact of reusable container from a service company”, Re:Dish

13) “Lists of service companies: Third party operators providing reusable food packaging for take-out and delivery at your favourite restaurants”

14) “Waste Characterization Study for New York city”  2017. 

15) “Waste Composition Study in Vancouver”  2020.

16) “Vancouver’s zero-waste-target by 2040”

17) “Moving on from single-use plastics: How Europe is doing? “  

18) “UN legal limits on single use plastics and microplastics” a global review 2018.