Social influence fosters the use of a reusable takeaway box

Disposable Plastic Waste and Associated Antioxidants and Plasticizers Generated by Online Food Delivery Services in China: National Mass Inventories and Environmental Release

China's online food delivery (OFD) services consume enormous amounts of disposable plastics. Here, we investigated and modeled the national mass inventories and environmental release of plastics and chemical additives in the plastic. The extra-tree regression identified six key descriptors in determining OFD sales in Chinese cities. Approximately 847 kt of OFD plastic waste was generated in 2021 (per capita 1.10 kg/yr in the megacities and 0.39 kg/yr in other cities). Various additives were extensively detected, with geomean concentrations of 140.96, 4.76, and 0.25 μg/g for ∑8antioxidants, ∑21phthalates, and bisphenol A (BPA), respectively. The estimated mass inventory of these additives in the OFD plastics was 164.7 t, of which 51.1 t was released into the atmosphere via incineration plants and 51.0 t was landfilled. The incineration also released 8.07 t of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and 39.1 kt of particulate matter into the atmosphere. Takeout food may increase the dietary intake of phthalates and BPA by 30% to 50% and raise concerns about considerable exposure to antioxidant transformation products. This study provides profound environmental implications for plastic waste in the Chinese OFD industry. We call for a sustainable circular economy action plan for waste disposal, but mitigating the hazardous substance content and their emissions is urgent.

A review on takeaway packaging waste: Types, ecological impact, and disposal route

Rapid economic growth and urbanization have led to significant changes in the world's consumption patterns. Accelerated urbanization, the spread of the mobile Internet, and the increasing pace of work globally have all contributed to the demand for the food takeaway industry. The rapid development of the takeaway industry inevitably brings convenience to life, and with it comes great environmental pressure from waste packaging materials. While maintaining the convenience of people's lives, further reducing the environmental pollution caused by takeaway packaging materials and promoting the recycling and reuse of takeaway packaging waste need to attract the attention and concern of the whole society. This review systematically and comprehensively introduces common takeaway food types and commonly used packaging materials, analyzes the impacts of discarded takeaway packaging materials on human health and the ecological environment, summarizes the formulation and implementation of relevant policies and regulations, proposes treatment methods and resourceful reuse pathways for discarded takeaway packaging, and also provides an outlook on the development of green takeaway packaging. Currently, only 20% of waste packaging materials are recycled worldwide, and there is still a need to develop more green takeaway packaging materials and continuously improve relevant policies and regulations to promote the sustainable development of the takeaway industry. The review is conducive to further optimizing the takeaway packaging management system, alleviating the environmental pollution problem, and providing feasible solutions and technical guidance for further optimizing takeaway food packaging materials and comprehensive utilization of resources.

Cost-benefit analysis of reusable takeaway food containers usage: a case on campus in China

Promoting the use of reusable takeaway food container (RTFC) in takeaway industry is an effective way to reduce the negative environmental impacts caused by single-use plastic containers. This study intended to figure out the barriers to the new business model deployment through evaluating the economic costs and benefits of RTFC from a stakeholder's perspective. Taking the pilot RTFC project at a university in Guangdong province as a case, we established a holistic cost and benefit analysis framework from a stakeholder's perspective. Both the costs and benefits with and without a market price of each stakeholder were evaluated using market price method and contingent valuation method. The analysis result shows that while shifting to reusable takeaway food container, the costs and benefits of all the main stakeholders changed. The net benefit of consumers is positive about 360 thousand yuan during 2020-2025, while the platform company, the university and the restaurants gain negative net benefits ranging from - 20 to - 470 thousand yuan under current operation situation, which may hinder the sustainable development of this new business model. However, the sensitivity analysis shows that all the stakeholders could gain a positive net benefit by adjusting the rental price, cleaning price and packaging price, as well as optimizing the location of recycling cabinets.

Heterogeneous effects of other-regarding interventions on household recycling: A field experimental study

Behavioral interventions that address other-regarding motivations (i.e., other-regarding interventions) are gaining momentum as promising tools to stimulate household recycling. However, previous studies have shown considerable variability in the impact of such strategies, and the factors that moderate treatment effects remain poorly studied. Using a field experiment with 7195 households in Quzhou, China, this study investigated treatment effect heterogeneity systematically based on intervention types, treatment durations, personal motivations, and social networks. Three strategies were examined, including biospheric and altruistic appeals and personalized normative feedback. We found that normative feedback outperformed other strategies in inducing household participation in recycling, that the influences of all strategies attenuated over time, and that the feedback effect was greater among recipients with weaker biospheric or altruistic concerns and those embedded within stronger neighbor networks. However, no significant treatment effects were found on the amount of waste recycled. These findings improve the understanding of the heterogeneous impact of other-regarding interventions, with important implications for the design of recycling policies. Future studies need to explore additional moderators and the effects of treatment combinations.

Scaling Up Change: A Critical Review and Practical Guide to Harnessing Social Norms for Climate Action

Anthropogenic carbon emissions have the potential to trigger changes in climate and ecosystems that would be catastrophic for the well-being of humans and other species. Widespread shifts in production and consumption patterns are urgently needed to address climate change. Although transnational agreements and national policy are necessary for a transition to a fully decarbonized global economy, fluctuating political priorities and lobbying by vested interests have slowed these efforts. Against this backdrop, bottom-up pressure from social movements and shifting social norms may offer a complementary path to a more sustainable economy. Furthermore, norm change may be an important component of decarbonization policies by accelerating or strengthening the impacts of other demand-side measures. Individual actions and policy support are social processes—they are intimately linked to expectations about the actions and beliefs of others. Although prevailing social norms often reinforce the status quo and unsustainable development pathways, social dynamics can also create widespread and rapid shifts in cultural values and practices, including increasing pressure on politicians to enact ambitious policy. We synthesize literature on social-norm influence, measurement, and change from the perspectives of psychology, anthropology, sociology, and economics. We discuss the opportunities and challenges for the use of social-norm and social-tipping interventions to promote climate action. Social-norm interventions aimed at addressing climate change or other social dilemmas are promising but no panacea. They require in-depth contextual knowledge, ethical consideration, and situation-specific tailoring and testing to understand whether they can be effectively implemented at scale. Our review aims to provide practitioners with insights and tools to reflect on the promises and pitfalls of such interventions in diverse contexts.

Situated Affectivity and Mind Shaping: Lessons from Social Psychology*

Proponents of situated affectivity hold that “tools for feeling” are just as characteristic of the human condition as are “tools for thinking” or tools for carpentry. An agent’s affective life, they argue, is dependent upon both physical characteristics of the agent and the agent’s reciprocal relationship to an appropriately structured natural, technological, or social environment. One important achievement has been the distinction between two fundamentally different ways in which affectivity might be intertwined with the environment: the “user-resource-model” and the “mind-invasion-model.” The twofold purpose of this paper is to complement the debate about situated affectivity in general and about “mind invasion” in particular by, firstly, connecting it to situationist research in social psychology and, secondly, broadening the perspective to not only accommodate decidedly detrimental “invasions” but also potentially beneficial forms of “mind shaping” that include the manipulation of an agent’s experiential life and behaviour through the moulding of both the agent’s environment and the agent’s body.

Mapping the environmental impacts and policy effectiveness of takeaway food industry in China

The takeaway food industry, involving more than 0.4 billion consumers in China, has brought mass of packaging waste and salient environmental burden. Here we mapped the distribution of takeaway food industry across China including the industry scale, diet structure and order time based on the analysis of more than 35 million takeaway food orders. The real use situation of various packaging materials in the takeaway food industry market has been clarified. The life cycle assessment of "a piece of takeaway food delivery order" has been carried out in different regions. Results show that in addition to plastic waste generation, takeaway food industry causes more types of environmental impacts. In terms of the national resource consumption, greenhouse gases emission, water pollution and health damage risk, the top 5 ranked provinces in each accounted for 44%, 48%, 43% and 49%, respectively. Under the latest Chinese plastic pollution control policy, the industry needs to reduce 1.12 million tons of non-degradable plastic packaging by the end of 2025, and 65% of the pressure is clustered in the metropolis and provincial capitals. However, without targeted and regionally differentiated plastic pollution control policies, the environmental impact control of takeaway food industry is still ineffective. It is urgent to explore the control measures applicable to different regions. Overall, packaging reduction is more effective than material substitution.

The effectiveness and efficiency of using normative messages to reduce waste: A real world experiment

Although they are only home to 16% of the global human population, high-income countries produce approximately one third of the world's waste, the majority of which goes to landfills. To reduce pressure on landfills and natural systems, environmental messaging should focus on reducing consumption. Messages that signal social norms have the potential to influence people to reduce their consumption of comfort goods, such as straws, which are not a necessity for most people. We conducted a randomized field-experiment at a marine park in Portugal to test whether different normative messages reduced visitors' paper straw use when compared to non-normative messages. We found that a message framed around a positive injunctive norm significantly reduced straw use compared to a non-normative message. We estimated that using the message at 17 park concession stands could keep over 27500 straws out of landfills annually and save the park money after two years.

Consumer expectation and responses to environmental sustainability initiatives and their impact in foodservice operations: A systematic review

BACKGROUND

With increasing pressure on the Earth's finite resources, there is significant demand for environmentally sustainable practices in foodservice. A shift to sustainable foodservice operations can decrease its environmental impact and may align with consumer expectations. This systematic review explored consumer expectations (attitudes pre-intervention) and responses (behaviour, cognitive attitudes and affective attitudes post-intervention) towards environmentally sustainable initiatives of foodservice operations.

METHODS

A systematic search following PRISMA guidelines was conducted across MEDLINE, EMABASE, CINAHL and Web of Science databases. English and full-text research articles published up to November 2019 were identified. Consumers' expectations and responses to interventions were extracted. The quality of the studies was assessed using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT).

RESULTS

Thirty-three studies were included and, given the heterogeneity of the studies, the results were synthesised narratively. The main outcomes analysed included changes in behaviour and attitudes (cognitive and affective), including knowledge and satisfaction. Intervention strategies were interpreted and categorised into three groups: food waste reduction, single-use item and packaging waste reduction, and initiatives related to menu, messaging and labelling. Most studies resulted in significant pro-environmental changes towards decreasing food waste, decreasing single use-item and packaging waste, as well as engaging consumers in sustainable eating.

CONCLUSIONS

There are a range of successful environmentally sustainable strategies that when implemented by foodservices can have a mostly positive impact on consumer attitudes and responses. However, positive consumer attitudes did not always translate to changes in behaviour. Foodservices should carefully consider implementing interventions that support changes in consumer behaviour.

Research on the Design of and Preference for Collection Modes of Reusable Takeaway Containers to Promote Sustainable Consumption

The development of the online to offline business has accelerated the growth of the online food ordering market in China. The widespread use of disposable takeaway containers has resulted in a large amount of waste, which seriously affects the ecological environment. This paper studied the collection modes of reusable takeaway containers and the preferences of consumers and merchants. First, after two rounds of discussion and revision, four takeaway container collection modes were designed. Second, based on the survey results of consumers and merchants, a binary logistic regression model was applied to analyze the preferences of consumers and merchants. The results showed that the consumers’ delivery requirements and the current disposal of takeaway containers had a significant impact on consumers’ preferences. Consumers were more concerned about the hygienic status of the containers, food health and safety, while the merchants were more concerned about the increased costs. The promotion of collection modes requires the special consideration of the locations of dishwashing facilities and increased costs. Finally, according to the preferences and concerns of consumers and merchants, several suggestions on promoting the collection mode, such as the use of different promotion strategies for different people, the short distance of dishwashing facilities, reward systems, and food safeguard measures were proposed. This research provides guidance for decision making regarding the sustainable consumption and the promotion of reusable takeaway containers, which will contribute to resource conservation, ecological environmental improvement and sustainability.