“Green nudges”: Foodservice delivery app incentives can slash single-use waste, finds Chinese research

20 Sep 2023 --- Chinese researchers have discovered that incorporating “green nudges” into foodservice apps, by which single-use cutlery (SUC) is not automatically included in orders, can dramatically reduce the quantity of packaging consumed. The study follows new regulations in several major Chinese cities that prohibit online food-delivery companies from including SUC unless it is explicitly requested.

Published in Science, researchers from Hong Kong University’s Faculty of Business and Economics collaborated with multinational e-commerce and retail giant Alibaba to use its mobile food delivery platform, Ele.me (similar to Uber Eats and DoorDash), to incorporate prompts rewarding customers for not selecting SUC in their orders. 

These “green nudges” increased the share of non-SUC orders by 648%. The study authors estimate that if these tactics were applied to all of China, more than 21.75 billion sets of SUC could be saved annually – equivalent to preventing the generation of 3.26 million metric tons of plastic waste and saving 5.44 million trees.

The authors state that the cost of implementing such changes for food delivery companies is “trivial” and that “private sector and platform companies can play a powerful role in promoting prosocial behaviors among their customers.” 

“Better alignment between their corporate social responsibilities and eco-friendly initiatives could bring about far-reaching impacts to our planet.” 

Single-use cutlery causes massive amounts of avoidable waste in China.Green nudges 
Between 2019­ and 2020, the Chinese government enforced prohibitions on food-delivery companies providing SUC to customers who do not explicitly request them. The ban is currently imposed on the cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin. 

To comply with the regulations, Ele.me changed its delivery app in three ways: 

• Adding a pop-up window required customers to explicitly choose the number of SUC sets included with their orders. 
• Setting the default for this pop-up window to be “no cutlery.”
• Providing a small non-monetary incentive to those who chose the “no cutlery” option. If one accumulates enough points (by placing more than 1000 online food orders), they can be redeemed in exchange for planting a tree (under the customer’s name) in a desert area in China.

The researchers say that after the “tremendous” results of the trials, for which costs were “almost negligible,” they recommend that other online food-delivery platforms, such as DoorDash and Uber Eats, try similar tactics to reduce global plastic waste.

Foodservice threats to China’s environment
As of 2019, more than 540 million Chinese citizens were active users of food-delivery services, and each day consumed more than 50 million sets of SUC that were not adequately recycled or disposed of, according to research. 

The study notes that SUC in China typically includes a plastic fork, a plastic spoon, a pair of wooden chopsticks, and a napkin. 

As a result, SUC usage in China is not restricted to plastic waste but also large amounts of wood-based fiber products. This reduces forest area, threatens the nation’s ecosystems and poses substantial human health risks. 

The foodservice ban on automatic SUC deliveries is part of the government’s target of reducing SUC usage in food deliveries by 30% by 2025. 

By Louis Gore-Langton