Until March, I could count on one hand the number of times I ordered takeout or delivery this year. Food critics tend to eat away from home a lot — in my case, 10 or so meals a week, give or take a salad night off.
Blame the global health crisis for our Godzilla-size appetite for takeout. Few of us are equipped or inclined to cook three meals a day for ourselves, and takeout and delivery have come to our rescue on a colossal scale. Market research company NPD Group reports that for the second quarter, covering the full impact of shelter-in-place and mandated dine-in closures, digital orders spiked by 127 percent compared with the same time last year.
Because most plastic isn’t biodegradable, it sticks around. “Almost 80 percent of plastic ever produced is entombed in landfills, strewn across the world’s landscapes or drifting in the seas,” Bloomberg reported in March. The same story said that China, a major importer of used plastic until two years ago, stopping taking it, partly because much of it was contaminated.
Sylvia Casares, the owner of Sylvia’s Enchilada Kitchen in Houston, switched from styrofoam to recyclable polypropylene containers this spring. The new packaging has separate compartments for the beans and rice and tight lids for clean transportation. Casares pays a dollar a carton — twice what she did before — but says the extra cost is worth it. “I want the experience to be as close to what it is in the restaurant,” the chef says. “Food that’s cooled off or has spilled doesn’t reflect that.
The best choices rely on the fewest chemicals, such as fluorine, that might leach into your food or the environment after they’re used. He’s all about small carbon food prints. Relatively easy to recycle, glass was selected for the mignonette accompanying takeout oysters. Rubba hopes the 5-ounce jars are attractive enough for people to reuse at home. The chef was excited to find compostable food packaging made from sugar cane, until he discovered it was produced in China. Subsequently, Rubba sourced similar containers made in the United States.
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