Takeaway food packaging is just one aspect of the plastic pollution issue. To combat this, Just Eat has launched a six-week trial of home compostable sauce sachets which, if successful, could change practices across its 29,000 partner restaurants.
Just Eat says the Ooho! seaweed-based sauce sachets are ‘fully compostable, decomposing within six weeks’.
Earlier this year, Just Eat announced a package of measures to reduce excess plastics included in UK takeaway deliveries. Part of this was a commitment to ‘invest in the research and development of innovative and practical alternatives for single use plastics’.
With more than 11 billion plastic condiment sachets sold globally, Just Eat has been working with sustainable packaging start up, Skipping Rocks Lab, to trial the use of seaweed-based home compostable sauce sachets.
They are trialling the sachets with restaurant partner, The Fat Pizza, in Southend for six weeks.
Just Eat works with 29,000 restaurant partners in the UK and the trial will assess the feasibility of rolling out the seaweed sauce sachets more broadly across its network.
The sachets, which are filled with either ketchup or garlic sauce, are made from an alginate-based material. They are opened just like normal sachets and Just Eat says they can be thrown into the home compost, or otherwise the normal bin, to fully decompose.
Other measures announced by Just Eat as part of its commitment to reduce plastic pollution across the UK takeaway sector include:
- Just Eat stopped selling single use plastics in its shop in March.
- Trialling a pre-ticked box on its app and website to encourage customers to opt out of receiving plastics that they don’t need. By the end of this trial, 20% of users had requested reduced plastic in their takeaway order.
Graham Corfield, UK managing director of Just Eat, said:
“At Just Eat, we’re committed to helping reduce the impact of the takeaway industry on plastic waste levels and we’ve already taken measures to drive more environmentally-friendly behaviour among our restaurant partners and customers.
“The Ooho Sauce Sachets trial and the results from it, will form an important part of our ongoing work to develop innovative and credible alternatives to traditional single-use plastic packaging currently in use across the takeaway sector.”
