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PARK CITY — A reusable take-out food container trial in Park City throughout the month of October is wrapping up.
A handful of restaurants and a catering business packaged up a lot of meals in multi-use containers this month. They're made out of the same kind of plastic as baby bottles.
Celia Peterson, environmental sustainability project manager for Park City, said there was low community participation during the trial. She said, moving forward, Bold Reuse, the city and other partners will work to use the containers with catering businesses and at large events.
Savoury Kitchen, one of the businesses that participated in the pilot program, had success with the containers.
"It's really simple," said executive chef and owner Joseph Saladyga. "There's no issues thus far."
He chose to use the containers for his business's school lunch delivery program.
"The Bold Reuse company drops off our reusable containers for the entire week. Then, every day we drop our 40 to 50 lunches at the school, the teacher serves to the students and they're all individually packed," he said. "When the students are done eating, (the containers) go into a bin at the school. Bold Reuse picks them up. They clean and sanitize them in their facility and deliver it back to us."
Saladyga said the cost of the program is comparable to buying disposable containers. Peterson said throughout the month, the city estimated about 700 containers were saved from going to the landfill.
Saladyga said he could see the program sticking around if more partners get on board and encourage more customers to buy in on this new way of serving take-out.
"If you went to a restaurant, picked up a to-go dinner, it's in your reusable container. Next time you're out, you drop it at a local restaurant that's got a drop box outside," he said. "It's got a pretty simple process."
He said if the program were to expand, more businesses — like hotels — would need to have drop-off boxes for the containers on site.
"A lot of people may or may not want to have that on site," Saladyga said.
The city plans to release a survey to everyone who participated in the trial to gather feedback.
