Today Zomato announced that they would recycle more than 100 per cent of all plastic used in food delivery packaging. Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal said in a statement posted on Twitter that the food delivery platform will roll out “100 per cent plastic-neutral deliveries” starting today.

“From now on, every meal you order through Zomato will be 100 per cent plastic-neutral, which means we’ll voluntarily recycle more than 100 per cent of all plastic used in the packaging of your order,” the food delivery platform announced.

To this end, Zomato has partnered with ISO-certified plastic waste management organisations to collect and recycle plastic waste across India. Over the next three years, Zomato will also help reduce the restaurant industry’s plastic footprint, Deepinder Goyal said.

Plastic-neutral delivery is part of Zomato’s goal to make food delivery more sustainable and environmentally friendly.
“Last year, we took the first step towards long-term sustainability by launching ‘Climate Conscious Delivery’ – we started funding local environmental projects to offset the carbon footprint of all our deliveries and packaging in India,” the company stated.

The introduction of “no cutlery required” as the default option for all deliveries also prevented “tons of single-use plastic from reaching landfill”. However, Zomato concedes that offsetting emissions from the production of new plastic packaging won’t solve the problem of waste plastic reaching landfills and clogging water bodies, which is when plastic-neutral deliveries emerge.

“This is just the first step towards a cleaner planet. There is more work ahead of us. We are doing everything we can to reduce or eliminate the use of plastic in food delivery,” Zomato said, adding that it is still committed to developing and promoting sustainable packaging.