Foodpanda Hong Kong Partners With Baguio iRecycle To Recycle Food Delivery Plastic Packaging

Food delivery giant Foodpanda recently announced a partnership with Baguio iRecycle, a waste management company to promote recycling of plastics in food delivery through Baguio iRecycle’s free door-to-door recycling service.

Foodpanda Hong Kong has debuted a collaboration with waste management company Baguio iRecycle to arrange free of cost door-to-door recycling to Foodpanda’s customers. This initiative is in line with Foodpanda’s sustainability goals to tackle the plastic waste generated from increasing takeaway trends that use single-use plastics for delivery of food, especially during the pandemic.

Prior to the partnership, Baguio iRecycle recycled plastic and glass containers. Thanks to this new collaboration, the company will now include the recycling of plastic food containers.

Since signing the pledge, Foodpanda has strived towards decreasing our impact on the environment and was the first food delivery platform to introduce the default cutlery opt-out feature in 2017. Foodpanda has saved more than 160 million pieces of cutlery across Asia since then. This also reinforces our commitment to WWF’s Plastic ACTion (PACT) initiative to reduce our environmental footprint

Woody Chan, CSR & Sustainability Manager of Foodpanda

If you’re a Foodpanda customer, you can inform Baguio iRecycle’s customer service of a convenient time for pickup and the recycling collectors will then arrive at your door to collect plastic bottles (PET, HDPE), plastic food containers (PP5), as well as glass bottles (glass recycling service serves Hong Kong Island and New Territories only). 

Back in March, WWF Hong Kong launched the Plastic ACTion Initiative (PACT), an industry-wide pledge to effectively tackle unsustainable packaging by 2025, which was signed by Foodpanda as well as competitor Deliveroo. Through this pledge, Foodpanda is working on innovative ways to eliminate plastic tableware, and to create a circular economy model for plastic food packaging in Hong Kong. 

Speaking on the recent partnership with Baguio iRecycle, Foodpanda’s CSR & Sustainability Manager Woody Chan underlined the company’s sustainability journey. “Since signing the pledge, Foodpanda has strived towards decreasing our impact on the environment and was the first food delivery platform to introduce the default cutlery opt-out feature in 2017. According to the company, Foodpanda has saved more than 160 million pieces of cutlery across Asia since then. This also reinforces our commitment to WWF’s Plastic ACTion (PACT) initiative to reduce our environmental footprint. We hope this partnership with Baguio iRecycle can be the next big step in our sustainability journey and motivate our customers to recycle their plastic disposables.”

Aside from this, over the first six months (1st February to 30th July, 2021) of this initiative, five top recyclers will be selected every month based on the number of items and they will win Foodpanda vouchers worth up to HKD$300 (approx. US$38.6) for recycling rinsed plastic bottles and containers (PP5) as well as glass bottles. iRecycle users will be able to earn iDollars through recycling and can enjoy discounts on entertainment, healthcare and more in the iRecycle mobile app.

Clement Li, Project Manager of Baguio iRecycle said of the collaboration: “This partnership with Foodpanda Hong Kong is a showcase of creating shared value and an example of the synergy that works beyond the rigid imagination of sustainable development. The role of the iRecycle App launched last April is to build up the green connections between waste producers and business owners and establish proper and clean recycling habits among the Hong Kong public. This is no easy feat and we are excited to grow and carry on this mission together with foodpanda.”

Since October 2020, the iRecycle door-to-door recycling service has collected more than 17,000 plastic and glass bottles.

Moving forward, foodpanda Hong Kong wants to start offering sustainable packaging to its partner restaurants to reduce plastic waste by exploring the use of reusable tableware for deliveries. 

In early April last year, Singapore ordered all food establishments to offer takeaway and delivery exclusively due to the ongoing pandemic. According to CNA, this led to a spike in single-use packaging due to orders from restaurants across the city. Food packaging supplier Dillic International, for example, observed a 30% increase in orders for their plastic food packaging products after the coronavirus measures were implemented.

In October of last year, Foodpanda Singapore collaborated with barePack on a similar initiative where they offer customers food in the latter’s reusable containers.

Lead image courtesy of Jasmin Sessler/Unsplash.