In New York City, ordering food for take out is like turning on your faucet. Everyday, delivery men brave the traffic and weather to bring you that hot soup, sushi to go or pepperoni pizza. Most of these orders include a host of plastic utensils and paper plates that will be tossed in the garbage; because with a busy New Yorker's schedule, most of these orders are delivered to apartments all over the five boroughs where plasticware is not needed.
Mayor, in your efforts to green New York, can you please require that restaurants with delivery and take out services ASK if utensils are needed before throwing handfuls of them into bags?
I've requested over and over "NO UTENSILS" when ordering my favorite dishes from Josie's or Two Boots, but my request is often unheeded.
New York has a plethora of online websites such as Seamless.com, eat24hours.com, grubhub.com. Only Seamless offers a "Green" option in which the restaurant will forgo providing utensils that will just end up as landfill, but many of their vendors do not heed the call.
As I'm sure you know, 10% of the plastic consumed ends up in the great Plastic Garbage Patch AND Americans toss out enough paper & plastic cups, forks and spoons every year to circle the equator 300 times.
I recently learned that your Mayoral office is not using plastic water bottles at major events anymore. Can you please extend this effort to the millions of meals that are delivered every day to New Yorkers by requiring restaurants to ASK customers if utensils are needed before thoughtlessly supplying them?
Let NYC be the leader in this effort to eliminate plastic waste!
Thank you.
