New Delhi:
Plastic is bad for environment and small changes can help in cutting down the carbon and environmental footprint of the food delivery business, Zomato said today in a blog as it appealed to its customers: “Say no to cutlery”.
Deepinder Goyal, the food delivery giant’s founder, this afternoon tweeted an important update: “On the @zomato app, customers could always skip cutlery with their orders. We are now changing this from an ‘opt-out’ to an ‘opt-in’. Customers will now have to explicitly request for cutlery, tissues, and straws, if they need it.”
“This small change can help save up to 5,000 kilos of plastic in a day. If you can, please say no to cutlery and do your bit,” he urged in another tweet.
This small change can help save up to 5,000 kilos of plastic in a day. If you can, please say no to cutlery and do your bit. Read more here –https://t.co/shxCvs7pHE
— Deepinder Goyal (@deepigoyal) August 30, 2021
The food delivery giant, in a blog said, that it “surveyed thousands of our customers, and a whopping 90 per cent of them said that they didn’t really need plastic cutlery with their orders”.
And that’s when the company decided to change the default mode.
Besides being an environment-friendly step that cuts down the carbon footprint, the firm has said that it will also help its restaurant partners save somewhere “between ₹ 2 and ₹ 5” on each order.
Zomato has also urged restaurants to channel these savings in transition to non-plastic packaging.
While restaurants “are excited about the measure”, the firm said it is expecting “some teething issues as we switch to a new default mode”. “We do not expect 100% compliance from the restaurant-end at the onset. Muscle memory needs to change, and we hope that it will happen over the next few months. We also urge other food aggregators to make this change so that the restaurant industry doesn’t have to shard its muscle memory going forward,” the blog read.
Zomato, additionally, requested the customers to be “the driving force” behind the new move, urging for feedback if a restaurant sent them plastic cutlery when it wasn’t requested. “We will pass on the feedback to our restaurant partners to ensure greater adherence,” it said.
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