Online food delivery platform Uber Eats has pledged to eliminate plastic waste from its deliveries and transition to sustainable packaging by 2030.

Ideally, the company hopes to achieve this target in the Asia-Pacific and European regions as early as 2025.

In support of this initiative, the company has entered into packaging partnerships with various companies in the US and European markets, including Bunzl, Green Paper Products, Enviropack and Dinovia, and Itochu in Japan.

These partners will help Uber Eats to transition to sustainable alternatives by avoiding the use of single-use plastics and to-go packaging from restaurants.

The delivery company will offer discounts of up to 35% on the retail prices of greener packaging solutions used by its merchant partners.

The company said its broader objective is to provide similar discounts to all its merchants across all the countries that Uber Eats currently does business in.

Uber Eats will also incentivise restaurants to adopt more sustainable packaging. It is collaborating with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Closed Loop Partners to issue packaging guidelines and partnerships to support restaurants.

WWF's director for Private Sector Engagement Mary Jo Snavely said: “With both global reach and local influence, Uber Eats’ plans for increasing sustainable packaging use within their merchant ecosystems are necessary in order to have the potential to enable widescale change across the food delivery sector.”

Uber Eats is also planning to invest in the development of some new features and functionalities for its own application, from where customers can choose to minimise their own waste.

Starting this week, customers who order online in Paris, Amsterdam, London, San Francisco, New York and Taipei can start choosing merchants who use green packaging,