A new study published in Science last week reveals that simple \"green nudges\" can significantly reduce plastic waste generated by food delivery services in the Chinese mainland. By tweaking default options and incentivizing sustainable choices, the research found a major drop in demand for disposable plastic cutlery.
The study demonstrated that making \"no cutlery\" the default option and rewarding customers with points for choosing to forgo utensils led to a 648% increase in orders without cutlery. The authors estimate that if these small nudges are applied nationwide, it could reduce the use of plastic cutlery by over 20 billion sets and prevent millions of metric tons of plastic waste annually.
Albert Park, chief economist of the Asian Development Bank and co-author of the research, discussed the study and its broader implications with CGTN's Guan Xin.
