At my quick service restaurant, some customers consume their meals on site, and others take home. How do I report this?

At quick service food establishments, a portion of customers eat in the restaurant and dispose of their waste at the restaurant. Other customers may have the food delivered to their residence or pick up the food and remove the associated packaging and paper from the restaurant and dispose of it at their residence. Stewards may deduct packaging from products supplied to consumers that are consumed at the steward’s on-site premises when the packaging and/or paper products associated with the product is disposed of at the steward’s business premises. Items such as straws, stir sticks or utensils are not designated in MMSW, MMSM and Stewardship Ontario programs and can be excluded from reporting. These single use items when provided alongside a take-out container are designated in the Recycle BC program and need to be reported.

Please note that deductions only apply for the items for which the steward is obligated to report. For example, with the introduction of Single-Use Products (SUP) and Packaging-Like Products (PLP) in the Recycle BC program, stewards should be mindful that they are the designated producer of the item.

Stewards must ensure that they do not claim deductions for packaging or paper products that is removed by consumers from their premises and managed in the residential waste stream. For example, if a steward is providing ketchup packages to consumers at a quick service restaurant, the only packages that can be deducted from the total supplied quantities are those that are disposed of on-site at the restaurant. The rest must be reported. A deduction may only be made if it is substantiated through the completion of a Deduction Declaration Form, supported by appropriate validation data (applied to SKU-level information) and the steward describes their methodology for calculating the deduction in the methodology section of the annual report. Please see the Deduction and Exclusion Policy and Section 2.3.2 of the Guidebook for Stewards for more information on deductions.