Hands up, I get takeaway delivered to my office daily.

When I first started working in an office here in Dubai, I was genuinely shocked at the food delivery culture. I had previously been working in a school where we had access to school canteen food (lucky us right?!) so to find people ordering food once, and sometimes twice daily, and the amount of waste that comes with it (it’s A LOT even in a office of 12 people) was an eye-opener.

Dubai has got to have one of the best food delivery services in the world – with one major flaw

The food delivery service in Dubai is world-class. You can get healthy food fast, saving you time in the kitchen, saving you time in the supermarket and meaning you can a good meal brought basically right to your desk. But what gets me is the amount of plastic and packaging that comes with it.

An order for one person might come with a plastic bag, a cutlery set wrapped in plastic, your meal tightly wrapped in plastic… Then you’ve got the places that individually box each part of the meal, so separate packaging for each little bit. Enough is enough, it’s time to take a step back and look at ways to reduce.

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Some spots are stepping up

A brief scour of delivery apps right now shows some spots giving you an option of cancelling your cutlery set OR they might ask you to pay AED5 for them. LOVE this. Freedom Pizza, who in 2017 sent out 500,000 straws and plastic cutlery packs this year adopted a no-straw policy and they’re asking you to order and pay for cutlery packs individually, this was followed by the entire Jumeirah Restaurant Group banning unnecessary plastic, two moves you’ve got to applaud.

Queen Elizabeth II declared war on plastic at Buckingham Palace too with a ban on plastics like straws and bottles, the royal cafe is even shunning food containers for biodegradable and compostable containers. I know if you’re a local eatery, switching up your packaging would be a pricey move to start with, but the decision to charge for plastic cutlery is GENIUS. And would make everyone think twice about what they’re consuming.

Lovin Dubai will give a shout out to every restaurant who contacts us saying they will reduce the use of plastic by cutting straws and charging for cutlery packs

#thelaststraw #stopsucking

See, not even dogs like plastic