An eco-friendly pizza box, of all things

There's a Wal-Mart commercial for pizzas running these days.  It talks about all the money you could save getting Wal-Mart take and bake pizzas if you eat pizza twice a week.  Now my first thought was, good god, that's a lot of pizza.  But according to this article on Triple Pundit (from Paul Smith), 4.8 billion pizzas are eaten in the US every year.  That's 13,150,685 pizzas every single day.  Jeebus.  That's a LOT of pizza (it works out to be 16 pizza pies per person per year...I suppose that sounds more reasonable...but anyway...).

Okay, so back to the pizza box.  That of course means there are all sorts of pizza boxes tossed out.  So Paul's article is all about a company that's trying to put a green spin on the pizza box:

Depending on the pizza, having a plate to set it on is a necessity. want to store what you don't eat? Good luck, that bulky box often requires you to muscle other things out of the way to make room. What if the box could double as a plate? And triple as a compact post meal storage container? It can, using the same ol' box, remixed. It's called the Green Box.

It's simple really: Take the standard box, perforate the top into quarters, and they can turn into plates. Perforate the edges of the bottom of the box, then once down the middle, and you can fold that into a leftover box that's half the size of the original. Less than that, actually, since the box is wedge shaped.

So, you've made pizza eating easier, and for some, that's all they need to know. A boon to both pizza shop owners and customers. But the impact beyond that could be huge. How? Think about all the other things that would have been used with a normal box: Plates plus the time/water/detergent used washing them. Disposable plates if you're out, likely tossed. Paper towels standing in for plates. Plastic wrap or foil used to cover or wrap the leftovers in a smaller package then that mammoth box.

[Read the rest over at 3P]

Mmm...speaking of pizza, I'm kind of hungry....

Hmm that's a simple but clever idea.  I like it.

Personally we usually eat Safeway frozen pizzas, which don't come in a box (just on a piece of cardboard covered in plastic, both of which we recycle), and then eat them on dinnerplates that get washed afterward.

But I like the idea of the foldable box and using it as plates if eating outside where you can't use dinnerplates.  Good thinking!

That's a very good idea since generally pizza boxes can't be recycled because of food contamination (grease), at least you're getting more use out of it before it gets tossed.

Good point!  I forget that sometimes...  :(  This idea is awesome.