While the average American generates 234 pounds of plastic waste every year, no more than 9 percent is typically recycled. The problem is that recycling, as David Pinsky, an anti-plastics campaigner from Greenpeace tells me, isn’t the silver bullet the plastics industry has made it out to be. The same year, Uber Eats ballooned 149 percent to $1.5 billion.Ī post shared by Seamless on at 9:11am PDT

Grubhub alone (which also owns Seamless) racked up $5.1 billion in gross food sales - a 34 percent increase from $3.8 billion in 2017. At least one research firm posits that the US online food-delivery market will grow 6.5 percent year over year from $22 billion in 2019 to $28 billion by 2023. The rise of app-based food-delivery services like DoorDash, Grubhub, and Uber Eats, which make it easier than ever to order in and chill, isn’t helping. In 2017, this amounted to 80.1 million tons. In the United States, packaging as a whole - that is, for food, beverages, cosmetics, and medications - accounts for 30 percent of municipal solid waste. While we haven’t quantified how much of our plastic waste stems specifically from takeout, takeaway, or food delivery, we do know we’re drowning in it. “That’s insane.” We’re inundating the planet with single-use plastic that isn’t being recycled “All this stuff for just one cup that will be thrown in the trash,” says Samantha Sommer, program manager of ReThink Disposable, a Clean Water Action initiative that transitions businesses from single-use products. Even the most prosaic coffee cups come with a sleeve, a stirrer, some sugar packets, and - you betcha - a lid. Americans throw out 120 billion disposable cups every year, or 363 paper, plastic, and Styrofoam cups per person. You can blame it on our obsession with convenience, and nowhere do we require convenience more than in the food and drink we order for takeaway and delivery. Since plastic never truly goes away, you might say our entire planet is one giant drawer of shame. They’re a visual reminder of the plastics I have disposed of: Styrofoam clamshells, sushi trays, waxy paper pails, clear salad bowls, double-walled soup containers, sauce cups, and - deep heave - straws. They’ve survived a move from the city to the suburbs, which means I have plastic forks older than my daughter, who turns 11 at the end of the month. Its contents (from takeout orders, from cross-country flights, from who knows where) do not spark joy, but I’m wracked with too much guilt to throw them away. About once a week, I slide open what I’ve taken to calling my “drawer of shame,” gaze at the plastic cutlery and wooden chopsticks that seem to multiply with each year, and then slam it shut with a sigh.

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