Plastic Cutlery? Fork that!

In the US there are over 40,000,000,000 single-use plastic utensils thrown away each year. Habits of Waste launched #CutOutCutlery to convince major food delivery applications to only provide cutlery upon request, reducing plastic waste and saving restaurants money.

Habits of Waste is focused on changing people’s habits by encouraging everyone to rethink wasteful behavior and drive systematic change. Their effective campaigns target those everyday routines we go through without even thinking and they are creating real results.

With #CutOutCutlery they convinced UberEats, GrubHub, DoorDash and Postmates to change their default settings globally to only provide cutlery when requested by the customer.

Launched after they spearheaded the first plastic straw and cutlery ban in history, which was in the City of Malibu. Congratulated by many but there was still a shared concern that they kept receiving plastic cutlery with their online take out orders. So, in 2018 Habits of Waste launched #CutOutCutlery, an effort to get every food delivery application to join us by changing their default setting so that they provide their users with plastic cutlery only upon request.

They reached out to the sustainability departments of each app but simultaneously launched an email campaign where our supporters could send a pre-written email to all the apps as well (14,000+ emails were sent in total!). The emails that were sent to the food delivery applications asked that they join #CutOutCutlery and only provide cutlery when requested by the customer.

By the end of 2021, all 4 major food delivery applications had joined. But this wasn’t enough! Habits of Waste pushed for legislation in the City of Los Angeles and later to the state of CA whereby ALL restaurants must provide plastic cutlery upon request only which was passed in 2021. Habits of Waste  also worked with over 120 other NGOs to spearhead this legislation, which has also been passed in more than 25 US cities.

They are now working to convince major chain restaurants such as Chipotle, McDonalds, Burger King and Wendy's to make the same commitment to #CutOutCutlery as the major food delivery applications.

It’s only through the combined actions of people that this was made possible and proves that we really are stronger together.

Want to #CutOutCutlery where you are? 

Habits of Waste have created posters that you can personalise, download and provide to restaurants that need to change. The signs are reminders for both patrons and restaurant employees to provide plastic cutlery upon request. Studies show that behavior change needs many reminders so that it sticks. The more restaurants who have this, the better our chance for success. Currently the signage is being used worldwide for restaurants to take part in Cut Out Cutlery and reduce wastefulness. It’s simple but powerful. Download your poster here. 

According to estimates, England uses 4.25 billion items of single-use cutlery — most of which are plastic — per year, but only 10% are recycled upon disposal.The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is currently running a consultation on proposals to ban commonly littered single-use plastic items in England. You can submit your views before the 12th February 2022 here.