MB Lunch Club - Our Why
Does the food service industry have a takeout problem?
More than 1 trillion individual pieces of disposable foodware and packaging are used by US restaurants and food service businesses annually1. Disposable foodware items require resource extraction, production, transportation, packaging, and natural resources such as water and energy, and are often made from fossil fuel based materials. And at the end of it all, you use the product once, maybe twice, and throw it away.
Is plastic that bad?
Single-use items are often made from plastic where production and disposal account for 3% of global carbon emissions2. Of course, not everything ends up in landfills, some of it becomes litter and pollutes our rivers, lakes, and oceans. Reusable foodware and packaging can eliminate the need for single-use items. While they still must be produced, instead of throwing them away, we can rewash and reuse them. Instead of 1 trillion pieces of trash annually, we can have zero.
Is recycling effective?
The EPA found that the U.S. plastic recycling rate in 2018 was only 8.7%3. There are many reasons for such a low rate, including contaminating batches, requiring them to be thrown out, facility limitations, non-processable materials, and more. Consumer awareness such as putting the wrong items in the recycling bins or leaving food residues and oils makes them non-recyclable, and if enough of them end up in one batch, it all gets thrown in a landfill or incinerator.
But what if we compost?
Compostable items have also led to consumer confusion. Many items are being sold and labeled as compostable, with a caveat. These items are often only compostable in specific facilities, many of which do not exist. Composting facilities that do exist may not have the infrastructure to handle these commercial products or often do not want to contaminate their compost with products that do not fully break down.4
How does the Mountain Burger Lunch Club fix this?
Eliminating the need for disposable foodware and packaging in the food industry can be impactful in reducing plastic production and pollution, but not many businesses offer this as an option. The Mountain Burger Lunch Club was created to solve this problem. Each lunch box delivers your meal in a reusable container, with utensils and cloth napkins directly from our restaurant, eliminating the need for disposable items. The Mountain Burger Lunch Club is just the first step in our efforts to reduce the use of single-use, disposable takeout items.
1 840 billion single-use products could be replaced by new reuse service economy
2 How much of global greenhouse gas emissions come from plastics? - Our World in Data.
The Old Way
The New Way
