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Comment by cududa | Hacker News Reader

That’s a whole lot of not gonna happen.

Why in the world would you drive dishes around town, and keep a double set on hand, or possibly a triple set on backup for when the service goes down

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This is actually very common in China. The cutlery comes all wrapped in plastic on every table, it's washed in a centralized location

Interesting. I'm always surprised by just how little I know about China.

...and then my relatives open them up and insist on rinsing each piece with boiling water anyway (conveniently always provided as part of the tea service).

Also, in recent years, many restaurants have started to charge for the wrapped plastic cutlery + dishes, usually 1 RMB for cutlery and 2-5 RMB for the dish set (you don't get to keep them - it's basically just the fee for the cleaning + packaging). Perhaps they're trying to encourage people to bring their own, which is a bit of a weird (but probably environmentally friendly) idea.

Sounds like an environmental nightmare. It may be a drip in an ocean, but it's so completely unnecessary. Or am I missing something, apart from the human psyche ("it feels more fresh that way!")?

No your probably right, probably is pretty wasteful

It happens with linens for hotels, why wouldn't it work for dishes?

Weight, breakage, flexibility and space constraints for dishes are much different

Also, someone needs to scrape, check, pack and unpack the boxes. I can't see this saving money, especially at places with high turnover.

But if there aren't enough dishwashers, then the ones that they do have quit because they're overworked, then the rest of the kitchen staff has to pitch in and THEY are overworked too, and then the customers get slow service, it's like dominos. I can see just falling back to dish delivery

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