Ordering takeout from your favorite neighborhood spot is a treat. What’s not a treat? The disposable packaging that’s used for pretty much every to-go order. Whether you’re digging into a burger and fries or summer rolls and pad see ew, what you’re left with is a heap of unrecyclable trash that’s problematic for both the environment and our overburdened waste systems.
Philly Unwrapped aims to address the ubiquity of single-use packing waste in food service establishments. This local coalition was launched in early 2023 by ECHO Systems, a decade-old Philly-based nonprofit focused on designing circular systems for urban sustainability.
“This project brings restaurant owners/operators, sustainability advocates and city stakeholders together in a way that’s collaborative, practical and financially realistic,” says Alisa Shargorodsky, executive director of ECHO Systems. “We support business owners in reducing packaging waste through education, incentives, vendor connections and city policy engagement.”
The coalition kicked off its activities with a series of listening sessions that convened members of different small business communities. Owners and operators were invited to discuss single-use plastic waste solutions and the effects of the plastic bag ban and other similar legislation around certain packaging products.
“We wanted to understand: How are these bills going to impact our local business community? If the bans are an economic burden, how will we expect businesses to make these transitions?” Shargorodsky says.
From there, Philly Unwrapped developed a sustainable packaging toolkit for businesses. Once it has moved past the public comment period, the toolkit — translated into Spanish, Mandarin and Cantonese — will be published with its own URL.
Philly Unwrapped also offers consulting services on reusable packaging logistics, like sourcing and sanitation. Part of this effort has been urging the Philadelphia Department of Public Health to adopt an updated food code that provides a clearer path toward reuse. They have done waste reduction projects with the Waldorf School of Philadelphia and Fishtown Montessori and a large packaging overhaul for Weavers Way Co-op, which Shargorodsky points to as a major success story.
“Weavers Way hired us to integrate a circular system called weReturn for its bulk, deli and prepared foods programs, which has already kept 40,000 single-use containers out of their waste stream,” she reports. “The co-op hopes to level that up, with a goal to spend 40% less on single-use plastic by 2028.”
Philly Unwrapped has also partnered with Clean Water Action’s ReThink Disposable program to select local businesses for hands-on support to reduce disposable packaging at no cost. In collaboration with Trash Academy, they also plan to develop a creative research and visualization tool to help clarify the complexities of single-use plastic packaging. The progress of these projects hinges on obtaining new funding streams; previously awarded grants from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection are currently frozen or uncertain.
As Philly Unwrapped has educated various stakeholders, Shargorodsky has noted that people across the board, including consumers and food service operators, are invested in packaging beyond plastic. She believes that the next phase of awareness-building needs to focus on single-use plastic as both an environmental and public health threat.
“Most people have no idea that there are 16,000 chemicals of concern in single-use plastic — the materials are so normalized,” she says. “We must activate people around the idea of protecting ourselves from these chemicals. There are better alternatives, but it requires players from across the city to come to the table.”
