It’s all too easy to order a meal from Just Eat or Uber Eats when we’re feeling too lazy to cook. But all these takeaway meals can have negative effects in the long run. Firstly, the cost of regular takeaways can quickly add up, causing us to have less money left over each month for important expenses like bills and home essentials. Secondly, many takeaway meals aren’t particularly healthy and can quickly contribute to weight gain and other health problems if we consume them too much.
Then there’s another overlooked issue – which is the environmental damage of takeaway meals. The food delivery industry isn’t very eco-friendly, and by regularly consuming takeaway meals you could be fuelling this industry and its practices. The following post explains more as to why takeaway food isn’t particularly green, and how you can overcome your takeaway addiction to help reduce your carbon footprint.
Why is takeaway food bad for the environment?
Many fast food chains rely on food practices that aren’t particularly eco-friendly such as buying ingredients from factory farms, importing mass ingredients and relying on non-organic ingredients. If you typically buy your takeaways from these big chains, this is something to consider. It’s worth noting that some takeaway restaurant chains are more eco-friendly than others (for example, although still fairly un-green, McDonalds and Subway are better options than Burger King and KFC).
Meanwhile, the process of delivering food to your door is something to consider too. Every food order creates extra carbon emissions that you could have prevented had you eaten in. These carbon emissions contribute to local air pollution levels, which has become a growing problem in many residential areas of cities.
However, the biggest problem with takeaway food isn’t the food or the delivery process – but the packaging. A lot of takeaway food restaurants still use single-use plastic packaging, which is typically not recyclable. This plastic is slowly filling up landfill sites around the world and is unlikely to degrade for thousands of years. Some restaurants have switched to recyclable plastic, but often the stains from sauces and oils used in meals can end up making this plastic too difficult to recycle regardless. Until single-used plastic packaging is completely abolished, takeaway meals will continue to be environmentally unfriendly.
How to consume less takeaway meals
It’s easier to resort to a takeaway meal if you haven’t planned a meal for that day. Therefore, meal planning is often the key to reducing takeaways. By working out exactly what you’re eating each day in advance and preparing this food (such as taking food out of the freezer to defrost or even beginning to cook food in a slow cooker), you can prevent yourself from giving in to a takeaway.
It’s also important to remind yourself of the cost of takeaway meals. Sticking to a strict household budget can make you less likely to order takeaway meals, because they are typically the expensive option compared to buying meals from a store. Home budget software can help you to establish a budget and think more economically about your food choices.
You should also consider exploring healthy fast food options which you can prepare yourself. Stir-fries, tacos, burgers and rice bowls are meals that are easy to whip up yourself at home – and they can be made very healthy if you use the right ingredients. Start planning these meals for when you’re feeling lazy as opposed to resorting to takeaway meals.
If you do decide to indulge in a takeaway, try to make it a seldom treat. This could include allowing yourself one takeaway meal per month. This will ultimately make you appreciate takeaway meals much more when you have them. Remember that you can still eat out at restaurants if you don’t want to cook at home – this could be cheaper in many cases, and will reduce the need for packaging.
You can also reduce the environmental damage of takeaway meals by considering exactly where you order your food from. A growing number of restaurants are now doing away with plastic packaging and are instead using material options like cardboard, paper, cornstarch and aluminium foil. Many also hire couriers on bicycles to make local deliveries, which are more eco-friendly than deliveries via car or van. Finally, many local independent restaurants are more likely to use greener local ingredients. Researching all of these things when choosing a takeaway restaurant can help to make your takeaway meal less damaging to the environment.