Zomato is changing this default setting on its app to reduce plastic waste – Times of India

Zomato is introducing a little change in its apps to reduce plastic waste. Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal announced that the default option which automatically requests for cutlery from restaurants will now be unticked. If you need cutlery like plastic straws, napkins, spoons, etc then you will have to select the option on your own. In case you skip it, then your food will be delivered without any cutlery. Earlier, by default users got free cutlery with their food order unless they opted-out of it.
“We surveyed thousands of our customers, and a whopping 90%+ of them said that they didn’t really need plastic cutlery with their orders. Keeping this in mind, we decided to change the default mode for cutlery – customers will now have to explicitly request for cutlery, tissues, and straws, if they need it. This is now a ‘opt-in’ instead of a ‘opt-out’,” said Zomato in a blog post.
As per Goyal, “this small change can help save up to 5,000 kilos of plastic in a day.”

Zomato also acknowledged that this will also help restaurants save costs as the cutlery is mostly complimentary. “This change will also help our restaurant partners save ₹2-5 (~0.5-1% of order value) on every order going forward. We urge all our restaurant partners to start channeling these cost savings to kickstart the transition towards non plastic packaging,” it added.
Zomato is said to have already rolled out this opt-in feature to 50% of its customers. It will be rolled out to all customers over the next three to four weeks.