Plastic Free F&B is a campaign by Green Initiatives which ran for two months, from October to December of 2018, aiming to encourage restaurants and F&B outlets to use less single-use plastics.
Single-use plastic items are thrown away in massive quantities every day. While we may forget about these products once they are tossed in the trash, these plastics do not just disappear. They end up in Earth’s soil, fresh water, oceans, and other natural environments. The toxic waste that it creates harms wildlife and marine life, destroys ecosystems and leaches harmful chemicals into our food chain.
With this campaign we asked people to leave reviews, for restaurants that still use single-use plastic for their dine-in costumers, on apps like Bon App and Dianping, to speak up about the plastic pollution problem by asking to reduce or eliminate disposable plastics from their outlets/restaurants.
We are happy to announce that we have received many positive responses from the public, campaign partners Bon App, and restaurant owners! This campaign has been encouraged and promoted through Wechat and many other social media platforms.
Our campaign partner Bon App is working on including an eco-friendly badge in their app for F&B outlets who are committed to running their business sustainably.
Food and beverage outlet owners were able to download and fill in a pledge, created for this campaign, as a promise to eliminate or reduce single-use plastic from their dine-in service.
We have received pledges from F&B outlets such as Slurp, Kartel Wine Bar, RAC, Pizza Street, El Willy, Cafe on Air, Tomatito and El Ocho.
We have also partnered with Pizza Street for a prize to the person who sends in the most Plastic Free F&B restaurant reviews during the campaign.
The winner of RMB200 voucher for pizza at the Aomen Lu Pizza Street location is a Dianping user with the username 11小黑狗!
Why This Is Important?Single-use cutlery is obsolete. With small changes in our consumer habits, we can help shape the development of circular economy among F&B industry.
The governments of more than 60 countries have implemented various bans on single-use plastics to combat the growing plastic pollution epidemic. China is leading in the renewable energy revolution, yet has lax regulations for disposable plastics, which are made from polluting fossil fuels.
A big thank you to our wonderful and passionate sponsors, partners, and participants. Even though this campaign has come to an end, we hope this initiative will continue to spread. We encourage everyone to continue publishing #plasticfreefnb posts on food review apps for the better of our environment and future!
Last little inspiration for restaurants: Originating from Indonesia, the use of banana tree leaves as packaging!
How creative YOU can get with your packaging?