‘The cusp of a reuse revolution’: startups take the waste out of takeout

More than 70% of Americans report ordering takeout or delivery one to three times a week - resulting in hundreds of billions of single-use products

The first question Lauren Sweeney set out to answer when she co-founded DeliverZero, a platform for ordering meals in reusable containers, was: do other people care about takeout packaging waste? Is it just me standing in front of recycling bins with sushi containers knowing they're not going to be recycled?" she asked herself at the time.

It wasn't just her. In November 2019, she and two partners launched the DeliverZero website, where people could place takeout orders that would arrive in reusable boxes instead of the standard disposables. Despite offering food from only a few restaurants in one Brooklyn neighborhood and having a very bad" user interface the app quickly took off.