Day 26: It's Time To Get Rid Of The Plastic On Your Pizza, AKA The Triangular Pizza-Saver

Since the beginning of this campaign, I have been looking for ways to get rid of single-use plastic items. This single-use or one-time use plastic items are used only once before they are thrown away or recycled. These are things like plastic bags, straws, coffee stirrers, soda and water bottles and most food packaging.

One such product is a pizza saver, the triangular table-like thing that keeps the lid of the box from touching your pizza and the toppings.

#pizza#cheese#chilly#baked#favorite#foodgoals#yummy#spicy#veggies#food#foodie#foodporn#italian#love#healthy#colours#happy#hungry#delicious#beautiful#insta#instgram#instagood#instafood#instafoto#instafoodie#picoftheday#foodforfoodies#foodgasm#foodstagram

A post shared by F??d¨ª? ??? (@_foodie__soul_) on Jun 26, 2018 at 11:49pm PDT

So, given our love for pizza's, can you imagine how many pizzas are ordered every day and how many plastic pizza savers are thrown away? It might just take a day, even less to make these savers, but they stick around in the environment for over 1,000 years. We produce roughly 300 million tons of plastic each year and half of it is disposable - so can you tell where it is coming from?

Do we really need this tiny plastic pizza saver? They say it saves your pizza from getting wrecked in the box, but our environment is paying an immense price to accomplish this tiny issue of handling. #NotAPlastoholic pic.twitter.com/qMG4Y7fS5v

¡ª Shewali Tiwari (@aBlahNari) June 7, 2018

In particular, can we not look for other alternatives for this? Add a paper sheet at the top, hold the edges through a cardboard stand? I am not sure what can be done, but all I know is that there are other alternatives we need to explore.

The nature of petroleum-based disposable plastic makes it impossible to recycle and have to be processed with new materials and chemicals to do so. Anyhow, there is a very limited list of things that are made from recycled plastic, so all in all, we incur a loss by using these items. In an ideal scenario, we should not be using single-use plastic at all and finding newer and better ways to eradicate it out of our system.

Had tried @pausasanmateo on a downtown restaurant walk a few months ago that supported Rotary Club. Really enjoyed the samples then so put this restaurant on my to-try list and finally got to go tonight. Everything on the menu looked so good that it was hard to choose. I ultimately went with the lamb porchetta pizza which also came with housemade mozzarella, summer squash pesto, graffiti eggplant, summer squash, and saffron pecorino. So tasty! The lamb porchetta was really unique and different, loved it. The veggies were so fresh and made this pizza taste healthier. And the dough for this was great, I even gobbled up the crust. Pausa provides scissors to cut the pizza with which I¡¯d never had to do before but it was a lot easier to do than I thought it would be. One benefit is you can cut a slice to exactly how much you want (like those times you¡¯re almost full and you don¡¯t want an entire slice but you do want to eat a little more). I look forward to returning and trying other items from the menu! . Check out http://www.pandasbelly.com for food reviews! Link in profile. . . . . . #pandasbelly #omnomnom #getinmybelly #foodie #sanmateo #peninsula #bayarea #pausa #pizza #? #lambporchetta #lamb #pizzanapoletana #foodiesofsanmateo

A post shared by Panda¡¯s Belly (@pandas_belly) on Jun 26, 2018 at 11:45pm PDT

Most of us use single-use items due to convenience, but in a new move, quite pivotal to our plastic campaign, things are about to change. The other day I ordered Pizza from Pizza Express and it came without the pizza saver.

What a brilliant idea it is to have square pizzas in lieu of round ones. We can do away with the plastic pizza saver. #NotAPlastoholic pic.twitter.com/cBKDRrLWec

¡ª Shewali Tiwari (@aBlahNari) June 27, 2018

The realization that pizzas can be served without the saver was a huge surprise for me. At the beginning of my campaign, I reached out to Dominos India and asked them if they were planning to ditch this saver, but I am yet to hear from them.

Hey there @dominos_india !!
I really really love your pizza but here's a little concern that I have. Is it possible for you to get rid of that pizza saver ( plastic) while delivering? It's good for you ( less cost), us ( won't leach chemicals in food) and the environment.

¡ª Shewali Tiwari (@aBlahNari) June 12, 2018

Don't you it would be amazing if every global brand took the responsibility of redoing things in a way that would help the environment?