Please visit  “EXPLORE HOW” for an explanation

Yes this is an inconvenience when going away from single-use.  However the restaurant industry had looked into this and indicated that this is a non-issue, the main points are:

• The majority of the returned containers are cleaned or at least rinsed by the customers; they can be put aside and re-cleaned by restaurants during their off-peak hours.
• Unlike the flimsiness of single-use, reusable containers are sturdy enough to be cleaned with the same process that is currently used for cleaning kitchen tools, bowls, plates, etc.

Been so spoiled by the convenience of single-use throw away items this would be extra work.  However, it will be easily justified by the benefits that changing to a reuse culture would bring:

• Benefiting from a high cost saving from the reuse economy
• Making the switch to a better material much more affordable to address government ban of single-use containers
• Improving your takeout food business by providing your customers with a guilt-free container solution
• Taking part in the protection of the environment and supporting a zero-waste solution.

Congratulation! At least you are on the right track by being environmental friendly with your takeout food business.  However, if one reusable can replace 100 of your so-called compostable containers, it eliminates a huge waste of valuable material resources (e.g., trees for paper containers), the unnecessary energy to manufacture and distribute single-use compostables, plus all costs associated with waste disposal. 

Reuses win every time with

• A significant cost saving for your business from a reuse economy.

• It stops unnecessary consumption of energy and valuable material resources.
• It eliminates waste and all associated costs.

Reuse is a truly sustainable and zero-waste solution that creates long term benefit to your business and the environment.

Some businesses that use inexpensive reusable containers argue that a reusable container program can be offered by relying entirely on customer’s willingness to return the container for reuse.  This may work to some extend but the return rate may be low.  However, it was proven that as soon as a small deposit amount is used to incentivize the return, the efficiency shoot way up (e.g., a return rate of 95% was achieved with just $0.05 to $0.10 refundable deposit for beverage and beer bottle in some Canadian provinces).  The small deposit also incentivizes some people into collecting the strayed bottles and returning them for recycling.

Today reusable alternatives for single-uses containers can be easily found on the market,  MUSTreusables solution allows restaurants to set the required deposit amounts based on the actual cost of a selected container.  Higher initial cost for reusables will not be an issue since the real cost to restaurants will be much lower when reuse economy is taken into consideration.

To best address this question, we will show you two cases: one where reusable cost the same or slightly higher than that of the single-use; and a second case where the cost of reusable alternative is significantly higher.

1) A reusable BPA-free polypropylene container has been tested up to 1000 of washing and reusing cycles, this version has slightly thicker wall and costs marginally higher than that of the single-use version.  In this case some restaurants start a reusable program by just asking for the return of their current single-use polypropylene container and post a small refundable deposit as incentive for the return of the container (i.e. no deposit was collected for the single-use container).  This is how they get thing started and gradually switching over to the better quality reusable BPA-free polypropylene containers. 

2) A single-use corrugated cardboard paper box is very popular in pizza delivery and is inexpensive ($1.4 each).  It’s also light weight and provides good insulation to keep the pizza warm during delivery.  An equivalent plastic reusable box needs several layers construction and be moulded in a round shape to save on material and weight, which can cost up to10 times higher ($14 each).  This reusable pizza box can last up to 200-500 cycles making it the clear winner in term of cost per use for the restaurant ($0.02-0.07 per use).  In this case, restaurants do collect a deposit for the reusable pizza box, the higher deposit amount gives customers a stronger incentive for returning the container, resulting in a very high return rate.