New partnership brings DishZero to Alberta Avenue
La Morenita restaurant will pilot this initiative to reduce plastic waste
A new pilot scheme aimed at reducing single-use packaging waste is coming to Alberta Avenue thanks to a group of NAIT Business students and the Alberta Avenue Business Association.
DishZero started as a program to help University of Alberta students reduce waste and is now expanding into our community. It aims to reduce the single-use waste associated with takeout through a dish-sharing system that is as convenient to use as its disposable counterpart. Launched at La Morenita, the plan is to encourage more businesses to participate and continue to expand the service as it gets more popular.
The whole process is straightforward and above all, free. All DishZero containers are also BPA free, National Sanitation Foundation certified, and microwave- and dishwasher-safe.
Calyca Greenwood, one of the NAIT students involved in this push, says she was inspired after visiting Denmark over the summer and seeing the “REUSEABLE” system, which has been rolled out across the entire city of Aarhus.
Erick Estrada, Executive Director of the Alberta Alberta Business Association, connected the NAIT and U of A groups and they began working together to deliver the pilot project.
"We'd love to see DishZero being used at multiple restaurants and cafes in the district and feel the Alberta Avenue community is the perfect neighbourhood to embrace this project!" says Greenwood.
While the model in Denmark is on a much larger scale, pilot schemes like this one could be a step on the path to helping Edmonton achieve the same level of adoption and help reduce the 91 million cups the City of Edmonton estimates is discarded every year.
NINETY-ONE MILLION!
That’s a lot of cups we are just throwing in the garbage (about seven per person every month). And they do go in the garbage. Despite paper cups often being made to look eco-friendly, the plastic they are lined with to make sure they are watertight means most are neither recyclable or compostable. The city doesn’t have the kind of industrial grade composter required to deal with these cups. Few cities do. So they go into the garbage and will likely take 20-30 years to decompose in a landfill. And that’s just cups — the number of single-use plastics we discard every year runs into the hundreds of millions.
DishZero coming to our community seems like an opportunity for us to support the kinds of initiatives that might make long-term, structural changes to how we live in order to reduce waste in a meaningful way. To support local businesses and back this ambitious venture, all you need to do is buy a coffee from a participating vendor and follow the instructions on the side of the cup.
So how exactly does it work?
Scan the QR code on the side of the cup.
Sign it out using your Gmail address (the team plans to add other options at a later date).
The container is now yours for the next 48 hours.
Return it to the drop-off point at any supporting vendor.
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