Extract from ABC News
Food delivery apps are a blessing. Thanks to the tireless efforts of delivery drivers, these days you can order anything from a Thai curry to a B&E roll or a tub of gelato and have it delivered to your door in half an hour.
But they can also be a curse. The plastic packaging and single-use cutlery that comes along with those orders contribute to increasing greenhouse gas emissions and our diabolical plastic waste problem.
Key points:
- Adding a "green nudge" to food delivery apps could promote more sustainable behaviours from users
- Changing the default setting to "no cutlery" on a Chinese food delivery app saw the share of no-cutlery orders increase by 648 per cent
- Researchers say this tweak could cut out 21.75 billion single-use plastics annually in China alone
One simple idea proposes to solve that problem: Change the default setting on food delivery apps to "no cutlery."
New research, published in the journal Science, suggests this subtle "green nudge" could promote more sustainable behaviours from users, dramatically cutting down on plastic waste generated by popular food delivery services.
"There are many things that we can do to reduce plastic waste, like publicity campaigns and adverts on the harms of plastic waste," said Guojun He, an environmental economist at the University of Hong Kong and lead author on the paper.
"We have seen those for years, but the problem is still there."
Dr He and his team assessed data from almost 200,000 users on Ele.me, the second biggest food ordering app in China, across 2019 and 2020.
They analysed data from three cities — Shanghai, Beijing and Tianjin — that had introduced bans on single-use plastics in food delivery apps. Seven other cities in China that had not instigated bans acted as controls.
In the seven cities where the plastic bans were not implemented, the default option on the ordering app was for cutlery to be delivered. In these locations, only 3 per cent of orders requested no cutlery.
But in cities with the bans, the default option on the app became "no cutlery." If customers wanted to grab a plastic knife and fork in their order, they had to request it.
This nudge saw, on average, about 20 per cent of orders across Shanghai, Beijing and Tianjin delivered without cutlery — a 648 per cent increase.
Notably, this had no effect on business performance, as the total number of orders did not decrease.
The team estimates that if green nudges were implemented across all of China, "more than 21.75 billion sets of single-use cutlery would be saved annually." That's equivalent to 3.26 million tonnes of plastic waste each year.
And because cutlery options in China also come with napkins and wooden chopsticks, He's team estimated they could also save 5.4 million trees.
Wink, wink, nudge, nudge
Marine ecosystems are drowning in plastic. It's challenging to even comprehend the scope of this pollution, with recent estimates suggesting between 1.1 and 4.9 million tonnes of discarded stuff are afloat in the ocean — and that's not even taking into account the detritus that gets caught in rivers, streams and estuaries.
Building green nudges into apps could help reduce the impact of this waste.
Nudges are underpinned by the science of human decision-making and have been around for more than a decade.
Green nudges are a more recent development, emerging as a useful tool designed to encourage behavioural changes with "positive and gentle persuasion," according to the United Nations Environment Programme.
For instance, providing ample bicycle parking at universities might nudge students and staff to cycle to work. Designing recycling bins to be more eye-catching might draw attention towards them and inspire more acknowledgement of recycling schemes.
And providing discounts at a cafe for using a reusable mug instead of a disposable cup prevents plastic waste by giving customers an incentive to bring a cup from home.
The effect of green nudges could have a drastic impact on plastic pollution, particularly in China, which is the largest producer and consumer of single-use plastics in the world.
The research team noted the implementation of the green nudge — simply shifting a cutlery choice default setting to "no cutlery" — only took "several hours of work" according to Dr He.
"The costs of introducing the green nudges are almost negligible."
Although green nudges might help businesses and consumers cut back, they're only one solution to a mammoth problem.
Combating plastic pollution will require a drastic reduction in production from major waste producers and a concerted effort upscaling plastic recycling.
A recent review by the Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation (APCO) showed Australia recycles only 18 per cent of plastic packaging and will fall well short of its 2025 target of 70 per cent.
Fork in the road
Over 7 million Australians use delivery apps in an average three months, according to Roy Morgan research data.
Back in 2018, we placed 27 million orders on food delivery apps. It's projected this number could swell to 65 million orders by 2024.
That's a lot of plastic forks.
At present, there's no one policy across Australia to tackle this problem. States and territories set their own rules and regulations, which can be confusing for consumers and businesses.
However, when it comes to single-use cutlery, things are a little easier: They're banned across all states and territories except Tasmania and the Northern Territory.
That means cutlery options on Australian food delivery apps are already limited to alternative options, like bamboo or wood.
Uber Eats made cutlery an opt-in option by default in 2019 but in states with bans, alternate options like recycleable cutlery is often sent. The company has also announced its Australian and New Zealand operations would be free of single-use plastic by 2030 and make reusable and sustainable options more accessible.
DoorDash and Menulog also provide single-use cutlery on request.
But the plastics problem goes well beyond cutlery. Coffee cups and bread tags, food trays and loose fill packaging, pizza tables and the soy sauce fish can all end up in your delivery bag.
For environmentalists, green nudges are important and helpful but they don't quite shift the dial enough.
"The biggest environmental gains will be delivered by moving away from single-use products of any kind, whether it be plastic, paper, glass or cardboard, and towards reusables," said Kate Noble, the No Plastics in Nature Policy Manager at the World Wildlife Fund Australia.
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