Combating food waste with restaurant doggy bags

25 February 2025

Being able to take the left-overs of a restaurant meal home seems like a sensible idea all around. Aside from dishes that, for whatever reason, may not be safe to eat later on, or the next day. While some dining establishments are averse to the practice, we’ve seldom had any problems.

One place doggy bags are direly needed are in food court situations in shopping malls. Here, much food is served as if it were a restaurant, and only sometimes in take-away cartons. We eat regularly at a place near where we live, and the food waste — plates of sometimes barely touched meals — defy belief. It makes me wonder why people ordered the food in the first place. But, if a way to take those left-overs home was an option, maybe not all of it all would go to waste.