THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The city corporation will soon convene the second meeting with the food delivery aggregators and the Kerala Hotel and Restaurant Association (KHRA) to eschew the use of single-use plastic containers as packaging material and shifting to green packaging. With more than 5,000 restaurants in the capital and around three popular food delivery aggregators offering their services on a daily basis, the amount of refuse generated in the form of packaging material is anybody's guess.
After the food delivery aggregators scaled up their services in the city, the pile of food and plastic waste associated with packaged food has shot up. Earlier the civic body had convened a meeting with the representatives of the hotels and food delivery aggregators. And now, to further its resolve of bringing the food delivery systems under the Green Protocol, the corporation will initiate the second level of talks and enforce it.
“The responsibility of serving in eco-friendly packaging falls on both the restaurants and the food delivery aggregators. The second round of talks will be called soon. The corporation cannot solely enforce this and the government needs to involve themselves in this," says Mayor V K Prasanth. "Our suggestion earlier was to incorporate details about Green Protocol and green packaging in their apps. They can charge extra from the customer if they opt for green packaging but such an option needs to be given.
The representatives said they will consult their companies and get back. Several options are being pursued, including putting steel packaging on the rolls or using eco-friendly packaging. The packaging waste is a significant per cent of the waste generated in the capital. And that prompted us to launch measures to control it,” he says.
KHRA has said it has already notified the restaurants in the capital to adhere to eco-friendly norms in their packaging, but that it cannot make it mandatory as the alternatives aren't available widely in the market. “There are a few restaurants who have chosen eco-friendly alternatives. Some have chosen to eschew straws completely while many have moved onto paper straws. Such interventions are happening and it is a welcome move. But unless we get suitable eco-friendly alternatives, we can't implement it. If such alternatives are made available at nominal rates in the market, then we can implement it across all the hotels,” says B Vijayakumar, secretary of the district chapter and one of the secretaries of the state chapter of KHRA.
Only very few restaurants have started opting for eco-friendly packaging. When Jithesh Mohan and his friends started their restaurant LF Eats, the thrust was on never using plastic packaging to serve or deliver food. And now, one year into their journey, they say the decision of choosing green packaging was the wisest and helped connect well with the customers. “We had to search a lot to zero in on a manufacturer who supplied eco-friendly containers. But we were particular about the quality of the food and it had to be in organic containers. We started with only lunch and we serve biriyani. We just introduced dinner, and everything is served in containers made using areca palm leaves and sugarcane pulp,” says Jithesh. “No waste is generated. You can either burn the packaging or bury it. We get around 500 orders on a daily basis for lunch alone. So if a start-up like us gets such a huge order, the waste generated in other hotels can be guessed. The packaging costs us Rs 10 per plate, but for us it was important,” he adds.
“There are restaurants that serve in eco-friendly containers. We have just reached the ideation level of bringing in organic packaging material but it has not reached the production stage. The only solution is to bring in eco-friendly packaging into the market. There are restaurants that offer juices in glass bottles that can be reused. So if the government can initiate a bulk production of these eco-friendly packaging materials, then it will make the change,” says Anjana Gopakumar, food blogger and one of the admins at social media group Eat At Trivandrum (EAT).