Environmental NGO ‘Let’s Make Cyprus Green’ is calling on food delivery providers, which have seen business boom during the coronavirus pandemic, to put pressure on the restaurants and cafes they cooperate with to be more sustainable when it comes to single-use packaging.
The NGO claims that customers do not need items such as straws, cutlery, condiments, and napkins, almost always made of plastic or paper as most of them already have these items at home.
’Let’s Make Cyprus Green’ has been putting pressure on food delivery providers in Cyprus to offer their customers an ‘Eco Option’, which will allow them to decide for themselves if they would like their delivery orders to arrive without any single-use items,” the NGO’s chairwoman Eleni Kazelas told Cyprus Mail.
“We would like to put the word out about this initiative to encourage restaurants and cafes which are cooperating with delivery apps to add our suggested option to their stores within the app.
“It’s something simple that will help them to reduce their environmental footprint while at the same time save money.”
Kazelas also said that some cafes on the island are offering plant-based straws that are falsely labelled as biodegradable or compostable.
“However, claims that these products are compostable are very misleading, as they require a commercial composting facility to break down, which we don’t have here in Cyprus,” she said.
“As a result, businesses are paying more money for bio-plastic straws which are just as harmful to the environment as conventional plastic straws if they are not commercially composted.”
Kazelas finally called on restaurants and cafes on food delivery apps interested in including a more environmentally-friendly option in their menus to contact the NGO through the website https://www.letsmakecyprusgreen.com/.
“The more businesses we get on board, the more chances we have to get food delivery apps to add this option as a default setting for orders or to ask the businesses they cooperate with if they would like to have this option.”
