As we all are aware and I am sure will agree, single use plastic food packaging is a very big source of plastic pollution in our country.  A 2018 report showed that over 22000 tonnes of plastic is produced every month in India due to plastic packaging and deliveries through online food delivery apps alone, and this number has only increased with the growing use of food delivery options due to the coronavirus pandemic. Plastic cutlery along with its adverse impact on the environment is also proven hazardous to our health as it has shown to increase the risk of kidney stones, accelerate breast cancer, cause hormonal imbalance, cause liver cancer and reduced sperm count.

The plastic packaging, single use plastic cutlery and tissue papers sent along with the food are unnecessary, useless and can be done without as we all have metal cutlery and cloth napkins at our homes to use instead, but this mandatory tag along with our food is increasing the plastic and paper waste produced, these plastics then dirty our streets, accumulate landfills, cause land and water pollution and threaten terrestrial and marine life. Single use Paper napkins sent along with all our food deliveries, increase the amount of paper waste and also increase the number of trees cut to make this paper, to get an estimate about how we are exploiting the environment for this unnecessary commodity, at least 17 trees are cut down and 20,000 gallons of water is contaminated in order to produce a ton of tissue paper.

A simple solution for ending all these problems is restricting restaurants from using single use plastic and paper napkins. So help make this change by signing this petition and requesting the National Green Tribunal and the Environment minister to take this much needed action.