Unfortunately, plastic waste is a problem that hasn’t yet gone away.

Until there is a total shift in attitudes towards plastic production and waste, right across the globe, responsible recycling needs to remain a top priority.

Even more unfortunately, not all plastics are created equally which means we are faced with the issue that there are certain plastics still in production that cannot be recycled!

As frustrating as this is for those, like us, campaigning for real change, there are ways that we can continue to help and make a difference to the problem of plastic waste.

With a little thinking outside of the takeaway box, we’ve explored 5 fun ways that non-recyclable packaging can be recycled and reused.

Much of the plastic recycling in the UK is dependent on where you live with regional councils operating slightly differently to the next.

Be sure to check out your local council website for more information on what can and can’t be recycled.

Once you’ve got your trusty list of non-recyclables, it’s time to stockpile and put them to good use!

Yoghurt Pot Planters

Good for your gut and good for your garden, yoghurt pots make great containers for planting your seedlings.

Try growing your own herbs and salad leaves, the kitchen window is a good place to start.

The best time to begin is January to March.

Give them a good clean and don’t forget to poke a few holes in the bottom to prevent water getting trapped inside.

This can be a great way to get children involved in gardening, cooking with homegrown ingredients and teaching them about responsible recycling.

Multiple Uses for Plastic Lids

In the majority of cases plastic bottles are recyclable but their lids are not and should be removed first.

Most recycling facilities are unable to process the type of plastic that lids are made from and if mixed with the plastic from the bottle, the value of the plastic as a whole is reduced which means it has a smaller resale value for recycling centres.

That’s particularly bad news because it means that the net recycled plastic is potentially nothing as opposed to just the bottle.

Here’s a few things you can do with plastic lids that are great for children – and big kids!:

Use the lids to teach children by having them sort color and/or size.

You could practice counting and basic maths skills by organising the lids into groups of multiples as well as adding and subtracting.

Once the maths fun runs out, lids make perfect game markers e.g. ‘snakes and ladders’.

Why not try making children’s jewelry by drilling little holes in the lids and stringing them to make necklaces and fancy dress items.

Lids work well as general craft supplies which can be added to the box and called upon later for art activities such as pop-out eyes for children’s art or even used in mosaics, for something a little more daring!

Plastic Bottle Tidies

It’s often said that a happy home is a tidy home… but rarely by children.

One ingenious use for plastic bottles, where they can’t be recycled, it to cut off the top third of the bottle, just as it begins to narrow into the neck, and use them as tidies.

How many pens, pencils, crayons, paint brushes, paperclips, blobs of blu-tack and mini monster figures do you really need scattered all over the house?

Here’s your answer, make little tidy-pots to store all these bits and pieces and your house will start to look home again, in no time.

What’s more, if the bottles are transparent, you’ll still be able to tell exactly where you put that weird green monster thing with 4 eyes and yellow hair that your child absolutely must take to the supermarket!

Build A Car Or A Plane

You could try your hand at building a car from a plastic spray bottle and using plastic lids as wheels.

Get stuck in, and with a little fiddling and creativity, challenge yourself to make it so that the wheels turn; make two of them and you’ve got yourself a race!

Children can take part in the preparing of the plastic materials, the making of the cars, the painting and decorating them in their favourite colours and patterns, and of course, the big race!

Check out this example below

Make A Jellyfish In A Bottle

For something a little different, you could make your own pet jellyfish in a plastic bottle.

Very simple yet effective and oddly calming.

Using up plastic bags, plastic bottles and lids, this one ticks a few boxes.

Try it in different colours with different types of bottles – check out this video for instructions.

The history of the napkin is not as straightforward as you might expect.

It might surprise you to learn that the first napkins were edible!

Yes, that’s right, you could eat them.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, wiping food from your mouth with more food is both counterintuitive and counterproductive, and you’re not wrong.

But the Ancient Greeks had a number of little quirks that made them the funny toga-donning olive-lovers we knew them to be.

Quite simply, they used a form soft dough, called apomagdalia, which referred to the bread on the inside of the crust, known as the crumb.

The Ancient Greeks used this to wipe their fingers after overdoing it with the tzatziki!

Following this practice, we have the Romans, who, in all their sophisticated and civilized splendor, introduced two forms of cloth:

The first was the sudarium (“sweat cloth”) which was used by the Romans much like a flanel to wipe their brows in the sweltering mediterranean heat.

The second cloth was the mappa, which was a large cloth that one would drape over themselves while reclining and eating, a favoured Roman position, as you often see depicted.

Of course, had they been told by their mother, like everyone at Takeaway Packaging HQ was, that you should sit up properly when eating and that slouching is bad for digestion, then they could have gotten away with just one cloth!

But then again, if they had realised this, then, maybe, we would have never had napkins!

Meanwhile, in the far East, the Chinese were using something akin to our beloved napkin.

Having invented paper in the 2nd century BC, little pieces of paper, known as chih pha, were folded into squares and used for serving tea.

According to some sources, they were used inside the baskets that held tea cups – old fashioned bubble wrap if you will.

Further along in time, back in Europe, napkins still hadn’t really become anything yet, and unlike Ancient Rome, there was far less reclining and certainly less sweating in the sun!

Regardless, people still ate with their hands and most people in the Middle Ages, whether peasant or King, would become quite the mucky pup toward the end of a meal (assuming they were lucky enough to get one!).

To clean themselves up people wiped their hands and faces with bread, their shirts, whatever was around.

Napkins in a more conventional sense did eventually make their entrance at the dinner table in the Middle Ages through a desire by the wealthy and privileged to create more formal settings.

A variation of the tablecloth known as a surnape was provided to guests and diners at the table.

After a while, possibly due to the cloth being easier to come by and the added bonus of protecting the table, these surnapes made it onto the table during less formal occasions as well.

Dinner table cloth-related practice continued in this way for some time.

Though you might think that the humble napkin became something of a post-medieval sensation, the tale dwindles out here somewhat, suffering from a three-pronged attack…

It’s all do with the rise of the fork!

Writing in a 1987 edition of the Good Housekeeping magazine, Albert Aylmer wrote:

“The introduction of the fork, however, caused eating to become so cleanly a process, especially in contrast to the recent past, that the napkin no longer held its ground as an article of use, but became merely an ornament and a thing of ceremony.

It was found that, with a little care, one could retire from the table without the necessity for cleansing the hands.”

And with that, the poor napkin become a thing of pomp and ceremony!

As for paper napkins, it was branded souvenir table napkins from Japan that set the trend late in the 19th century.

In 1887, British firm John Dickinson Ltd. acquired decorated napkins from Japan and had the inspired idea of printing logos and other marketing-related information on top of the paper napkins, effectively turning them into souvenirs and leaflets.

Behold, the branded paper napkin!

In 2018, the paper napkin appetite couldn’t be greater, and as such, Takeaway Packaging produce branded napkins in a variety of sizes, styles and qualities.

We can print them with your logo and artwork allowing you to combine marketing, functionality and a wonderful rich history!

With over a billion users, one of the most popular categories on Youtube is ‘unboxing’ videos!

People videoing themselves unboxing products while narrating what’s happening is nothing short of an internet phenomenon.

Viewers around the world can’t get enough of watching their favorite hosts, often via a live stream, building excitement and hype while showing off popular products and their cool features.

So what is it about the joy of watching someone else’s reaction as they open up and unbox a shiny new product?

Is it purely the thrill of the new item?

Perhaps the unrehearsed reaction of the host as it happens in front of your eyes and theirs?

We can’t be certain, but what’s certainly true is that capturing the unboxing brings a unique theatre to buying something that precedes the enjoyment of the product itself by drawing out the purchasing process.

Because of this new obsession, the attention given to the way that brands box and package their products has never been greater.

Apple products feature greatly in the unboxing world with hosts and viewers taking great delight in how perfectly Apple products are presented with neatly prepared electrical cables and perfectly snug compartments.

On top of that, Apple products are often very expensive so the unboxing of the latest iPhone or computer is one step closer to the real thing for many who are yet to get their hands on one!

These widely-shared experiences are often enjoyed in realtime and, though one of the largest categories, they’re not limited to expensive tech products.

The famous YouTube vlogger and gamer, PewDiePie (now enjoying over 61 million subscribers!) posted a video of him unboxing the “50 million subscribers” gift from YouTube.

This allowed the very same viewers that helped to contribute to the receipt the package – through following his channel – to also take part in the unboxing of it.

(Warning: video contains strong language)

The same hype, buzz and expectation around the unboxing of the latest product can also be achieved with takeaway packaging.

Nowadays customers are more aware of the other aspects of their food besides how great it tastes.

It’s important to know what’s inside it, where it’s from and what makes it different.

Takeaway food packaging is no different; your customers are aware and will take note of how your food is presented to them, so it’s important to get this right.

Feed (sorry) your customer’s desire for excitement by ensuring your packaging is sharp.

What does your packaging say about you?

Ask yourself if the packaging stands up to the food it contains.

Fresh food deserves fresh packaging designs that can be enjoyed in tandem.

But here’s where it gets really good…

Our beloved internet is full of curious little crazes and phenomenons, on the one hand there’s the unboxing craze, and on the other there’s a huge appetite (sorry again) for sharing food photos.

This is amazing news for takeaway food vendors because if the packaging looks great and is worthy of sharing, as well as the food, then it’s destined to become a viral internet sensation as it ticks both boxes – a double whammy!

Do this successfully and you’ll soon become part of the unboxing mania, which is exactly what marketers dream about: customers sharing their experiences and doing your advertising for free!

Not sure how to make your packaging epic and worthy of a live streamed unboxing?

Get in touch with our packaging design gurus who will be thrilled to talk to you about our fully custom design service.

Many people think that the Takeaway Packaging custom design team are actually genius wizards.

But this isn’t true.

We’re just normal people who like normal things and who are fanatical about packaging.

You see, we know amazing takeaway packaging when we see it and helping our customers to serve their great-tasting food in great-looking packaging is what we do best.

To design awesome drinks cups, you need creative juices.

To design superb noodle boxes, you’ve got to have creative edge.

To ensure we’ve got our finger on the takeaway packaging pulse, we always look to other fantastic examples for our inspiration.

What follows is a roundup of some highly creative packaging that we love and we explore what makes them so special.

Menu Packaging

Printing your entire takeaway food menu on your packaging not only looks cool but it’s also very shrewd.

Lots of printed text works really well on takeaway packaging as it harks back to the bygone era of when our fish and chips were wrapped up in a few sheets of the Daily Mail!

In addition to looking good and fondly reminding us of the old days, the packaging keeps on giving by advertising after the purchase has been made.

Anyone taking their food back to their desk for a working lunch will likely use the packaging as plate and continue to glance at other options they can have next time.

What’s more, if they love what they’re eating you can guarantee they’ll be planning tomorrow’s lunch using the menu!

Seriously Green

There’s green and then there’s seriously green…

This Slovakian-designed biodegradable food bowl looks great with its modest, rustic appearance.

The simplicity of the design and dingy colour of the packaging means that colourful foods like salads will look amazing in contrast.

Once finished, customers peel off the label to reveal the hidden seeds, fill the packaging with some soil and place it in the ground with the seeds, not forgetting to drop in some water.

In about a week the bowl will have turned to dust but your little herbs should be flourishing!

Eat your food, grow a plant, save a planet – you’ll actually end up with more from your packaging than what you started with!

That’s properly eco!

Food Packaging

We absolutely adore these fruity fruit juice cartons and they’ve given us so many ideas for other ideas we could create from this concept.

It’s bright, original, fun and bound to create intrigue, grabbing the attention of those that see it.

We also love the fact that the packaging is really ‘meta’ and the concept of takeaway packaging being self-referential is sure to create humour and standout among competitors.

Less thinking outside the box, and more thinking inside the box!

Functional Packaging

A prudent approach to packaging design is one that’s functional and helpful to your customers.

In a society where time is short and time is money, time for eating seems to be diminishing.

This is great for takeaway food vendors who serve the busiest people every day, but sometimes time is just so short that there isn’t time to stop what you’re doing.

Here’s one solution that might give you a few ideas… 

(NB, this kinda didn’t take off…):

Want Q-Tips?

Unlike most people in the UK, we love queues.

Queues mean that your takeaway food is in demand.

With high demand come high expectations.

Consider what’s special about your business, your brand, your culture.

Does your takeaway packaging convey this?

If your queues aren’t as long as you would like them to be, we can help!

Contact us today and let’s get creative!