A necessary evil
Containers costly, wasteful — but essential — in pandemic dining
Takeout containers costly, wasteful — but essential./
When restaurants were forced to quickly pivot from regular dining operations to to-go only options at the start of the COVID -19 pandemic, one necessary logistical issue was the increased use of takeout containers. Containers were the only way restaurants could serve their food and became a critical element in keeping the restaurant open for operation, even if the dining room was closed.
Todd J. Leach, owner of TJ’S Cafe on Central Avenue in Albany, said that prepandemic, takeout orders totaled 30 to 35 percent of all business for his restaurant. During the pandemic, that grew to 70 percent. On Tuesday chicken Parmesan special night, he would serve 300 takeout dinners. Including pasta or potato, soup or salad and bread and butter, the container needs to properly transport the food out of the restaurant meant different sizes and types of containers.
“By the time we are done figuring the cost of the takeout containers, it costs us a dollar more,” to serve the special to-go, Leach said. The move to hard plastic containers (instead of polystyrene, in keeping with local bans) bumped his per-container costs from 10 cents to as much as 38 cents. Three hundred takeout dinners in a single night equals a $300 expense for his business, which deeply cuts into his profits. Leach said numbers like that means even with labor costs, it is cheaper for people to dine in-house.
Leach said he has become a bit of a hoarder, as the rush to procure takeout containers had the restaurant industry scrambling to find whatever they could.
In Saratoga County, Patricia Pendegast Novo had a similar experience. “As demand goes up, so do prices,” Novo said. At her Taverna Novo restaurant on Beekman Street in Saratoga Springs, she resorted to purchasing items on Amazon.
"As much as possible we try to pay very close attention to things that are biodegradable, but they don’t have the same integrity. It is a matter of finding what works for you," she said. The most ecofriendly options, Novo said, are not always the options that best transport food and keep it safe, at temperature and intact.
Leach said, as someone in the hospitality industry, takeout orders are still an opportunity to provide hospitality and give a restaurant experience. “You can get service from a vending machine. Hospitality is a people thing. You want it to look a certain way, and takeout loses panache."
Another issue for Leach is the bag to carry the containers. The state's plastic bag ban was temporarily halted during the pandemic, but some restaurants had already moved toward plastic alternatives. “I have yet to find paper bags that
“As much as possible we try to pay very close attention to things that are biodegradable, but they don’t have the same integrity. It is a matter of finding what works for you."
— Patricia Pendegast Novo
fit to-go containers properly,” Leach said, and has been using plastic bags for the time being. Novo uses paper bags that are hand-stamped with her logo by her staff, a method that is cheaper than getting bags printed.
Some restaurants chose to push the increased operational cost of containers directly to the customer. Grano, an Italian restaurant on State Street in Schenectady, is reported on Facebook groups and Yelp to be charging $10 per person to cover the cost of takeout containers for its four-course dinner menu. “Turns out there is an extra $10 per person takeout charge in the four course menu. It is not disclosed on the website or the ads on Facebook,” Yelp user Melinda W posted in an online review for the website.
Others, like Paolo Lombardi’s Ristorante on West Sand Lake Road in Wynantskill, state on its online ordering page that all online orders will come with a fee to offset the costs associated with the convenience of online ordering.
Those are not the only inconveniences coming to customers with to-go ordering: the unwanted plastic flatware that comes de facto with to-go orders is an aggravation to many customers. Jodi Smits Anderson, of Albany, says she and her family order out two to three times a week and explicitly state when ordering that she prefers not to receive flatware or other serviceware or takeout-sized salt, pepper and ketchup packets.
“I swear we could have filled an office file box with ketchup packets,” Smits Anderson said. She tries to order from restaurants nearby in her Pine Hills neighborhood, allowing her to pick up her order from the restaurant and check her to-go bag for errant flatware. She said she has only been successful in not receiving the flatware and accoutrements a handful of times over the past year. Most of the time, the flatware comes with the salt and pepper paper packets and napkins in a thin plastic sleeve, she said.
“I’ve noticed that the utensils already are pre-packaged in the bag,” Smits Anderson said, as though the bags are set up before the order (with her clear instructions asking for no flatware) is placed and filled. Leach said restaurants require an opt-in from the customer in order for plastic cutlery to be provided. If a customer does not ask for it, it should not be provided, he said. New York state Assembly Bill 5383, which is awaiting Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s signature, solidifies this regulation.
Smits Anderson said she considers herself an “aggressive” composter and recycler. She relegates the plastic cutlery she has accumulated throughout the pandemic to a file box in her basement but said her hunch is that most people may not have the space to store the cutlery or may not have the motivation to curb it from becoming part of the waste stream.
“I understand I can bring it to a local shelter, but I have to put that effort in on my part,” she said.
Reporting from National Geographic shows that the U.S. uses more than 36 billion disposable utensils a year, a number so large that when laid end to end, all of those knives, forks and spoons could circle the globe 139 times. Less than 10 percent of all plastic waste is recycled, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, most of the rest being shipped to China for landfills. 150 million metric tons of plastic is already floating in the world’s oceans, with another eight million added annually. The World Wildlife Fund projects the amount of plastic in the ocean will double by 2030.
Closer to home, the regulations around recycling take-out containers are less clear. Local law 4 for 2018 for Albany County was passed to ban polystyrene (otherwise called styrofoam) and states, “all food service establishments using any disposable food service ware shall use a suitable, alternative product that is a compostable product or made of locally recyclable materials such as aluminum or hard plastic.” A waiver for continued use of polystyrene is available through the Albany County website, however, the City of Albany’s refuse management website — albanynyrecycles.com — does not explicitly list takeout containers or plastic flatware as part of its recycling program. (It lists “plastic food containers,” such as yogurt cups, but not to-go containers. Plastic cutlery is typically listed with a number 6 resin identification code, which should make it eligible for the codes one through seven listed as accepted on the website.)
The website states that waxed cardboard food containers are not accepted for recycling, which can be confusing for consumers. Cardboard milk cartons, ice cream cartons, soup containers, Chinese takeout-style boxes and many other waxy-feeling cardboard takeout containers appear to the common eye to be coated in wax, leading people to place these containers in the trash; however, the cardboard is typically coated with a polyethylene product, which is considered recyclable by most waste management groups.
Pizza boxes are non-recyclable, regardless of their cardboard make-up and despite the doubling of pizza orders during the pandemic, according to research group Restaurant Dive.
There is continued legislative action to curb plastic use, especially in restaurant takeout. New York State Assembly Bill 8722 was proposed in 2019 to require food service establishments to permit the use of reusable beverage and food containers by customers, while New York state Senate Bill 6750, which is awaiting signature from Cuomo, enacts a single-use plastic product ban, including drink cups and plastic straws.
While the intentions of most eaters and restaurateurs might lean toward biodegradable and recyclable options, government guidance and programs to recycle or compost the wares can be confusing, when they exist at all. The Center for Disease Control has recommended the use of single-use plastic cutlery and serviceware to curb potential virus spread, proving that the COVID -19 pandemic has not only been bad for human health, but for planetary health, as well.
Restaurateurs also have the appearance of their food to consider, particularly when third-party delivery companies (like Grubhub and Doordash) serve as a buffer between restaurant and eater and may not have the same commitment to the safe transport of food to its end destination. As Novo said, “You have to weigh the pros and cons. I save Mother Earth as many ways as I can, but I have to put my pasta in something practical.”