Ride-hailing company Uber’s food delivery service platform, Uber Eats, is taking the issue of plastic waste in food deliveries more seriously by aiming to reduce plastic waste by 2030.
The company has launched a new feature that will allow customers to search for cafes and restaurants that use eco-friendly “reusable, recyclable, compostable, and sustainably sourced” packaging. The new feature will be launched next week and will be rolled out in cities such as Amsterdam, London, Paris, New York, San Francisco, and Taipei. The company plans to help businesses shift to using more sustainable packaging through guidance from the World Wildlife Fund and investment firm Closed Loop Partners. Moreover, Uber will introduce sustainable packaging guidelines for merchants, and partner with companies such as Green Paper Products, Bunzl, Enviropack, and Dinovia.
Uber has also committed to eliminating emissions on rides worldwide by 2040. The company is aiming to achieve this by using only zero-emission electric vehicles, Lime e-bikes and e-scooters, or public transport integrated through its Uber Transit feature.
I documented a week of takeout trash. Here are the photos.
To achieve zero-emission deliveries, Uber Eats will extend its vehicle and micromobility partnerships in the US to enable delivery drivers to transition to using Lime e-bikes and EVs. The company is already collaborating with local stakeholders in France to minimize delivery packaging waste, and it will make similar moves in other cities worldwide by 2025. Also, recently, Uber announced its partnership with autonomous delivery startup Serve Robotics to help minimize food delivery using zero-emissions robots.
Uber Eats is not the first food delivery company to focus on reducing plastic waste through the use of less harmful packaging. Recently, Deliveroo announced that it will invest £2.5m ($3.12m) in subsiding the cost of sustainable packaging for its restaurants.
The use of single-use plastics for food and beverage containers contributes approximately 36% of all plastics produced and can result in 85% of that waste ending up in landfills or unprotected waste disposal areas. According to the UN, about 11mn tonnes of plastic pollution enters the world’s oceans every year, and the dominant chunk consists of consumer take-out items.
