As social change makers, we believe in the power of the individual to make small adjustments within their daily lives to protect the planet and combat climate change. Our goal is to activate large numbers of people with accessible behavior changes that collectively have a greater impact than a few people doing it “perfectly. ” Our mission is to clean up the planet, one ‘habit of waste’ at a time.
Every year, more than 40,000,000,000 pieces of single-use plastic cutlery are discarded and enter the waste system. Single-use plastic cutlery is not recyclable and often ends up in our oceans, killing sea life and releasing dangerous micro plastics and toxins. Research shows that most people prefer to eat with heavier, metal utensils compared to single-use plastic utensils.
#CutOutCutlery is a grassroots campaign working to reduce the amount of plastic entering the waste stream every year. We empower consumers to use our digital campaign to email decision makers at Postmates, GrubHub, UberEats and DoorDash to suggest that they change their default settings to provide cutlery by request only.
The top food delivery applications have all changed their global default settings to only provide single-use utensils when requested by the customer.
#CutOutCutlery has inspired legislation in Los Angeles County, Denver, Washington D.C. (and more) that makes cutlery available by request only. Massachusetts and California are also considering statewide legislation to do the same. As we have successfully gotten Postmates, UberEats, DoorDash and GrubHub on board we are expanding our efforts to focus on individual restaurants and restaurant chains to provide them the tools to adopt a similar philosophy and only provide plastic cutlery upon customer request.
Habits of Waste was named a “Nutrition Disruptor” as part of the “Shaping the Future of Consumption” platform and was a presenter and “Firestarter” in the “Consumers for Climate Action” series. #CutOutCutlery received the Outstanding Waste Prevention Program in 2020 by the California Resource Recovery Association. This campaign has been amplified by over 150 affiliated nonprofit organizations, including Surfrider Foundation, NRDC, Beyond Plastics, Plastic Pollution Coalition, Sierra Club, and Oceana.
