Cut Out Cutlery
The Problem
Every year, Americans use over 40 BILLION pieces of single-use plastic cutlery. Many of these pieces of cutlery are thrown away without being used. Since most diners are eating at home when they order food, they don’t need extra, unnecessary plastic cutlery.
Our Solution
Plastic cutlery should be provided by request only, not by default.
By working with major food delivery platforms to encourage them to make a default setting change to provide cutlery by request only, we can easily change a habit of waste.
These are the default setting changes we successfully advocated for at GrubHub, Uber Eats, Postmates,
and DoorDash:
“Everyone has one…”
Watch the viral video that made our campaign successful! Many thanks to Buzzfeed for creating this star-studded video!
Cast: Laura Dern, Adam Devine, Senator Ben Allen, Leah Thomas, Emma Rose Cohen, Diz Petit, Postmates.
Our Impact
We successfully advocated for the food delivery apps Grubhub, DoorDash, UberEats, and Postmates to make plastic cutlery available only upon request in 2021.
We followed this with another win in 2022: we spearheaded the initiative to pass AB 1276 into California law, with the help of our engaged base of support. AB 1276 requires restaurants and food delivery apps to provide plastic cutlery and condiments only upon request.
Our Impact
~2.48B
cutlery packs
$65M
savings for restaurants
19K
advocates
How much plastic did we save?
24.8K
metric tons
55
jumbo jets
31x
around Earth
Cut Out Cutlery inspires sustainable legislation nationally!
Over 170 municipalities and 4 states have now
joined Cut Out Cutlery!
Bills passed to #CutOutCutlery
Take Action
We have made immense progress, but there is still work to be done! There are more restaurants to encourage participation in Cut Out Cutlery.
We believe that McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Chipotle, and Burger King are the next national chain restaurants that should install an “OPT-IN” feature on their applications to provide users with the following items BY REQUEST ONLY: single-use plastic cutlery, condiment packs, napkins, straws, and other accessories. This will allow them to easily eliminate unnecessary waste.
Send an Email
Let’s make #CutOutCutlery be the new “normal” at national chain restaurants next. Help us today by sending an email with just 1 click to Wendy’s, Burger King, and McDonald’s to request they only provide cutlery when requested by the customer!
We convinced all four major food delivery applications, including Uber Eats, Postmates, Grubhub and most recently, DoorDash to change their default setting so that no one receives plastic cutlery unless they opt-in to request it. We advised these companies on the new plastic cutlery opt-in language and customer experience process.
Our work is not done until all restaurants and food delivery companies comply.
Restaurant Outreach
Help restaurants communicate with their customers and employees! Download and print a Cut Out Cutlery poster, and ask to display it at your local Wendy’s, McDonald’s, Chipotle, or Burger King.
