“Unboxed”

9 min readMar 24, 2021

The life of consumer packaging

Ordering food on the go, has become one of the defining statements of this decade, all thanks to the emergence of food delivery services that allow ordering food from the most expensive joint in the area to the local ‘Vada pav thela’ around the corner. With rising demands from customers, food joints are pressured to cater to each and every individual thus making it harder to accommodate people in their outlets but this invention of delivering food right to your doorstep has helped both, us customers who can enjoy a meal from our favourite restaurant right at home, without doing anything physically for it and also the food outlets not having problems of overcrowding. This has given rise to compact, cloud kitchens that are established only for the purpose of cooking for delivery, thus making this system of delivery freshly cooked, hot food to the customer in record time. this kind of model has thus become a go-to alternative for students and adults with work and no time to cook due to the amazingly cheap prices and discounts offered along-with hundreds of options and thousands of options of dishes are available at the click of a button. ‘Zomato’ and ‘Swiggy’ are two examples of these food delivery services and are the most sought after by consumers. Comparing daily order numbers, in November, Zomato reports having 1.25 Mn daily orders, while Swiggy said it has 1.4 Mn daily orders. India’s foodtech market was expected to grow to $5 Bn in 2019, and by 2023, it is expected to cross $15 Bn. While the industry has expanded across several verticals in these past few years, namely B2B, B2C, cloud kitchens, ready-to-eat etc, the food delivery space is dominated by two players — Zomato and Swiggy.

With these benefits and a huge amount of consumer demand, ordering food online is difficult to stop. We cannot imagine a world where these services and conveniences do not exist. These services have become so crucial to our everyday lives that even during a time like the COVID-19 pandemic that has resulted in a global lockdown on all transport services and movement of people, food delivery services continue to operate as they fall under ‘essential services’. Though this service may hold such importance in our lives and is growing bigger day-by-day, there is one big problem that this service industry is creating, a problem far bigger in size and intensity, growing everyday along-with the growth of this industry.

Packaging Waste generated through these app-based services amount up to 22,000 metric tons of waste every month. This waste mostly includes plastics, cutlery, cardboard boxes, bottles and stickers and tapes attached to these products. “According to the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), Bengaluru currently produces 5,757 tons of garbage per day — double what it produced just two years ago. Sixty four percent of this is wet waste, and 28% of it is dry waste. The rest is categorized as inert waste. Of the dry waste, packaging waste is a big contributor”, says BBMP. India is currently swimming in un-recycled plastic.

Given these statistics, what steps are being taken to tackle this menace of plastic packaging waste?

“Single use plastics are anyway banned. We are only urging companies to avoid other disposables also like plantain leaf, paper cups, plastic mineral water bottles. BBMP has to enforce plastic ban and also ensure scientific waste management. Single use plastic ban enforcement is a work in progress. Repeated drives along with shutting down illegal plastic manufacturing units is the way ahead.” — source, TNM Plastic bans, across the country, have been knee-jerk and shoddy in implementation. Without any real accountability, these bans are an eyewash. Also, there is no immediate solution to this rising problem, thus these products end up polluting into landfills. Re-cycling practices lack in implementation either because;

What are some of the steps businesses and companies are taking?

Chai point, an Indian tea company and cafe-based service, was one of the first to implement biodegradable packaging in their containers, cutlery and food trays.

But despite these steps, this is only just one food outlet that provides this type of biodegradable packaging options, also the main container containing the food item might be biodegradable, but the stickers, cutlery and the bag in which this food item is given in may not be of the recyclable kind and would end up in the trash.

Bio-lutions and using Agricultural residues to create packaging containers

This German company creates biodegradable packaging containers by using waste from agricultural activities.

This could be a viable alternative to the existing practices and materials used in packaging food products, but there are some constraints that make it difficult to implement such a model directly.

‘No Cutlery’ Option while placing order

Zomato rolled out this option that would allow users to opt out of cutlery provided by the restaurants in a move to reduce the consumption of these ‘use and throw’ options. Also, the cutlery provided today through these services have been replaced with recycled spoons and forks made from bagasse and use of plastic cutlery is more or less stopped. But this move also has its lapses, when at times due to errors, the order is sent along-with the cutlery even if the ‘No Cutlery’ option has been selected.

‘Given the scenario today, the push should not be having ‘No Cutlery’ as an option but towards having ‘No Cutlery’ as a mandate’.

Mumbai cha Dabbawalla’

“And so efficient is the system that the president of the Mumbai Tiffinmen’s Association claims that dabbawalas only make a mistake once in every six millions deliveries, translating to about one going missing every other month. It works so well that it has been studied by Harvard Business School and is reportedly the envy of FedEx”.

To counter this menace, there are smaller stakeholders in the whole food delivery industry, that practice sustainable practices when delivery their food; The dabbawallas of Mumbai follow a model of food delivery from homes to offices, where containers for packing the food are provided by the homeowners themselves. This ensures a single type of container that is delivered and re-used every time. Metal containers are used as tiffin’s which are made from aluminium which can be re-cycled, at the same time are durable. Also, this zeroes down the single-use packaging waste in this entire model. Apart from just having benefits in the way the food is packaged, the Dabbawallas are one of the most efficient food delivery system in the world. The tiffins are labelled using a system of symbols and colours, denoting where the tiffin is picked up, which station it will be sent to and the final address of the owner, all hand painted. The tiffin’s then travel on the city’s train network where at the other end the local dabbawallas pick them up for the last leg of the journey — the lunchtime delivery.

A wide ranging application of this model of delivery would create benefits in terms of;

Sustainable packaging that delivers fresh food.
Efficient transport by the delivery provider.
Usage of public transportation to deliver, thus commute becomes faster and less polluting.

These evidences and the current scenario raise a lot of questions in terms the product, i.e. the packaging solution, the seller, i.e. the companies and the buyer, i.e. us.

Each of these three are questions that we need to look at when looking for a viable and sustainable solution for the chosen context.

Looking at the existing model and the toll it taking on the environment, there calls for a Systemic change in the way our food is parcelled and delivered to us. In order for this to happen, innovation in packaging products will be important to create alternatives that are price-friendly and have qualities of heat retention and be sustainable. But I feel that innovation isn’t the only thing our focus should be on. Along-with innovation, there has to be a significant change in the mentality of the consumer i.e. us. This change would drastically affect the production and consumption of unsustainable packages and containers as customer demand towards these options would be reduced. Trying to make this whole process of food delivery to a customer should be made part of a ‘Circular Economy’.

The pyramid includes the points that would lead to this service becoming part of a ‘circular economy’. Here;

Government Regulations play an important role. In order to better and strongly enforce restrictions on use of plastics and non-recyclable materials in packaging, government policies need to be more wide ranging and strict with no exemptions given. Government bodies that are in charge of processing and managing waste need to be given adequate funds and infrastructure to allow better processing of waste and enable proper re-cycling.

Product Innovation would ensure a strong, alternate solution to the existing containers. Companies that manufacture biodegradable packaging containers like ‘Bio-lutions’ should take over the industry to provide packaging solutions. Processes used to manufacture packaging products should be environmentally friendly and circular.

In a model like this, the output at one end will help produce input at another end. This would ensure that the process of manufacturing would produce a lesser carbon footprint and also the disposal aspect would be considered.

But the main challenge here would be to create a perfect synchronization between the consumers, i.e. the people and the system to make sure this alternative also doesn’t end up in landfills.

For this exactly, a change in mentality of consumers is needed.

Attitude Change is at the foundation of this pyramid as it has the biggest game-changer here. The ability to say no to plastics and consciously either re-use containers or use a personal container for takeaway would create a significant difference in managing the over production and piling garbage through this service.

An Ideal Scenario

An ideal scenario won’t be a single solution or intervention, but in fact would be a system model for the entire service. It would include the processes involved in each part of interaction between the various stakeholders and the consumer.

What if the model of ‘mobile, small-scale tiffin-based’ delivery service providers is scaled to fit into the context of app-based food delivery services and making the process of delivery efficient as well as ensuring no excess packaging waste generated?

What I studied here, is a proposed system model that maps two different user groups and how food might be delivered to each of these groups in this Hypothetical model.