Help Local Restaurants, Cafés, & Bars Skip Single-Use Plastic
With 15 million metric tons of plastic entering the ocean each year, it’s clear that we need to turn off the plastic tap. And restaurants can play a large role in addressing our plastic pollution crisis.
After years of pandemic-driven take-out orders, many consumers whose drawers are overflowing with plastic straws, disposable plastic cutlery, and single-use plastic packets of ketchup, soy sauce, and mustard are clamoring for less plastic with their food.
“Hold The Plastic, Please - A Restaurant’s Guide To Reducing Plastic” offers restaurants detailed, practical, and inspiring advice for how to reduce the use of plastic in their operations and how to effectively convey those changes to customers, reporters, and the general public.
But they may not hear about the guide unless you get involved. YOU can share these resources and information with the staff and owners of restaurants, cafes, bars and cafeterias in your neighborhood, town, or city to help them begin their journey away from single-use plastic and towards reuse. Check out the organizing resources below to get started.
GUIDE: HOLD THE PLASTIC, PLEASE!
Our detailed guide offers practical advice, tools, resources (including funding resources), and case studies to help any restaurant interested in reducing plastic take meaningful steps to do so AND help them effectively message (and market) these changes to their customers, potential customers, reporters, and more.
Download the web-resolution version of the guide (4.06 MB PDF)
Download the print-resolution version of the guide (11.4 MB PDF)
The guide is also available in Spanish. Haga clic aquí para descargar en Español
If you have any questions about the guide, please contact Beyond Plastics policy director and guide author Megan Wolff at meganwolff2@bennington.edu. If you need any other materials to share the guide, please contact Beyond Plastics digital director Eve Fox at evefox@bennington.edu.
Click here to view the guide and download it to share with your local restaurants and cafes.
EASY-TO-PRINT ONE-PAGE HANDOUT
We realize that the guide is rather long :) If you’re interested in spreading the word about the guide in person, you can print out our simple one-page handout to leave with restaurant owners in your neighborhood after you speak with them.
We’ve designed it to be easy to print in black and white and it includes a QR code to make it easy for restaurant staff to scan it to get to the guide as well as a shortened URL they can type in to reach it.
View our one-page handout on the guide.
The one-page handout on the guide is also available in Spanish. Haga clic aquí para descargar en Español
CASE STUDIES
Restaurant industry folks may find it useful to see details from establishments that have made changes to reduce plastic. We’ve pulled out the two case studies included in the guide to make them easier for you to share:
In addition, our friends at ReThink Disposables have put together three excellent case studies about restaurants who have made the switch to reuse.
You can also point any restaurant staff who are interested to the recording of the webinar session featuring restaurateurs who’ve reduced plastics to hear from the owner of a chain and of a single establishment about what’s worked for them.
SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLKIT
Social media can be a powerful tool to help gather supporters and also to let restaurant owners and managers know this is an important issue that they should prioritize.
We’ve put together sample content you can share on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram as well as a sample email and some ready-to-use graphics to help illustrate this effort.