Chinese study finds food delivery apps could drastically cut plastic waste by ‘nudging’ users to skip cutlery

Alibaba-owned Ele.me increases frequency of orders without single-use tableware by more than 600 per cent through ‘green nudge’ encouraging users to opt out
If all delivery services in China adopt the practice, it could save more than 21 billion sets of forks, spoons and chopsticks annually, scientists say

Science

Victoria Bela

Published: 10:01am, 8 Sep 2023

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One of China’s biggest food delivery apps increased the frequency of orders without single-use cutlery by more than 600 per cent through a “green nudge” that encourages users to opt out of disposable forks, spoons and chopsticks, according to a new study that says the practice could have “tremendous” consequences for reducing plastic waste.

The paper, published on Friday in the journal Science, was part of a collaboration between the Asian Development Bank and Alibaba, owner of the South China Morning Post. China produced almost one-third of the world’s plastic as of 2021, according to a June report by the ADB.

The study was conducted from 2019 to 2020 after pilot regulations were introduced in Shanghai, Beijing and Tianjin prohibiting food delivery platforms from including single-use cutlery in orders unless explicitly requested, according to the paper.

The pilot regulations were introduced as part of a policy objective set by the National Development and Reform Commission aimed at reducing the use of disposable cutlery in takeaway orders by 30 per cent by 2025.

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Starting in 2019, Alibaba-owned food delivery app Ele.me made “no cutlery” the default option in its checkout window for users in a handful of cities, requiring them to opt in to receive cutlery, which had previously been included by default.

The researchers looked at a random sample of 200,000 active Ele.me users and compared those in pilot cities with customers in seven control cities who did not receive this “nudge” – a behavioural science concept that refers to framing a set of choices in a way that influences decisions and can include making the desired outcome the default option.

The study found that in cities where users received the nudge, the frequency of cutlery-free orders increased by 648 per cent. In the control cities “the share remained relatively unchanged”, according to the paper.

The team observed that the effects were the largest for frequent delivery users, women, middle-aged and elderly people and affluent users.

Users who chose to forego cutlery were also awarded “green points’’, which could be saved and traded in exchange for Alibaba planting a tree in the desert. However, the study stated that this played a minimal role because many users did not properly use the points.

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Guojun He, corresponding author of the paper and an economist at the University of Hong Kong, said he hoped the study could influence both Chinese and international delivery companies to implement similar changes as “the consequences could be tremendous”.

He said using a “green nudge” instead of charging extra for cutlery, which had been the strategy with plastic bags, was favourable because it did not cost users extra money to take part.

Nudges are also better targeted at the moment a person makes their decision, making them more effective than public campaigns or advertisements, he said.

The findings were not driven by outside factors such as increased media or publicity campaigns about plastic waste, as there were no significant changes in the amount of messaging after the regulations were introduced, according to the paper.

According to the paper, if Alibaba were to introduce this nudge to all cities in China, it could save 8.7 billion sets of single-use cutlery annually, and if all food delivery apps in the country implemented the nudge, that figure could rise to 21.75 billion.

This would be equivalent to eliminating 3.26 million tonnes of plastic waste and saving 5.44 million trees through reduced chopstick use. However, these are the “upper-bound environmental benefits”, according to the study.

The environmental benefits might not reach the maximum level because some restaurants still provide cutlery when asked not to, either because they were too busy to tailor orders or they feared people had chosen by accident.

He said the effects generally persisted over the study period, but there was a slight decrease over time that might be because users later realised they had to select the cutlery option if they wanted it.

Most users “seemed to be quite happy with the nudge”, he added.

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While 83 per cent of those surveyed responded positively to the nudge, He said there was a “puzzling phenomenon” in which 11 per cent of users, many of whom had previously opted to go without cutlery, started requesting it after the nudge was implemented.

He said the impact of the nudge was “very large relative to a lot of other studies”, which could be influenced by the fact that the nudge addressed both food and environmental concerns.

However, he said that “more nudges should be tested” to address other issues in the takeaway industry, such as single-use packaging and encouraging restaurants to comply with user requests.

He said nudges could offer an inexpensive way to achieve large environmental benefits, and further studies to identify the most effective combinations of choices and incentives would help with their adoption.