What Do You Do With Empty Plastic Takeout Containers? Americans Weigh In

by CivicScience | Apr 23, 2026 | Food & Beverage, General, Healthcare & Lifestyle, Human Interest

Photo by MealPro on Unsplash

Photo by MealPro on Unsplash

Anyone who has ever gotten takeout will be familiar with the ubiquitous plastic takeout container. While convenient for getting your food to go, the question always remains: what do you do with them after you’ve finished the meal?

Current CivicScience data show that 55% of respondents recycle or dispose of them, while 26% keep or repurpose them for another use. Just 9% donate or give their containers away, and 9% have no idea what to do with them (excluding ‘does not apply’). Although men outpace women in recycling or disposal, women outpace men in keeping and repurposing. Behaviors also change along income-level lines, with middle-income earners leading in keeping the containers and high-income earners leading with recycling or disposing. Meanwhile, those aged 30-44 and 45-64 lead in repurposing plastic takeout containers, and Americans 65+ lead in disposing of them, whether through recycling or other means.

What Americans Do with Plastic Takeout Containers Correlates With Other Behavior

Demographic data is just the beginning of what sets takeout container keepers apart from takeout container disposers. Here’s what else consumer-declared data from CivicScience has to offer:

Dine-Out Frequency: Those who typically donate/give away their plastic containers are by far the most likely to say they dine out or order takeout for dinner 3+ times per week. Those who tend to keep or repurpose them, meanwhile, are the least frequent to eat or dine out of the bunch.

Fans of the Great Indoors: Those who keep or repurpose their empty plastic takeout containers are at least six percentage points more likely than all others to say they find peace indoors.

Houseplant Success: While 24% of those who keep or repurpose their empty plastic takeout containers say they are ‘the best’ with houseplants, just 18% of those who recycle or dispose of their empty plastic containers say the same.

Grocery Shopping: Sixty percent of those who recycle their plastic takeout containers do their grocery shopping at a local or regional grocery store chain, the highest such percentage among any of the plastic takeout handlers. Those who donate them are roughly twice as likely as others to grocery shop at stores like Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods.

Recipe Followers: While 51% of those who keep or repurpose their empty plastic takeout containers enjoy cooking from a recipe, just 46% of those who recycle or dispose of those containers say the same.

Clearly, those who choose to repurpose or reuse their empty plastic takeout containers are not just mindful about waste, they’re consumers with unique behaviors that impact everything from where they find peace to how they grocery shop.

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This article’s data comes solely from CivicScience’s database, which contains nearly 700,000 poll questions and 5 billion consumer insights.

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