The city of Pinole is touting a new partnership between a local restaurant and FoodWare, a food service supplier, to offer zero-waste food packaging.
Fire Wings Pinole becomes the first restaurant in the city to introduce a sustainable model of reusables for takeout. The system works through the FoodWare app, where customers add containers to their account for a small fee that is credited back upon return.
At Fire Wings Pinole, customers can receive their food packaged in a FoodWare container upon request. They then have two weeks to return the container, creating a zero-waste system of food packaging.
FoodWare also has partnerships with the cities of Berkeley and Burlingame and San Mateo County.
This zero-waste plan is part of a larger single-use plastic reduction initiative called Plastic Wise Pinole.
Single-use packaging is an unsustainable pollutant that can damage the environment, and such packaging has been found as the major pollutant of Pinole Creek, the city said. Further, a 2011 Bay Area litter survey showed that 67 percent of all trash collected came from take-out food and beverage packaging.
In addition to reusable foodware, Pinole is also seeking to replace all single-use plastic bags with reusable or paper bags.