(Representational featured image generated using AI)

Open any food parcel from a restaurant or cloud kitchen today, and you’re likely to see the same thing — a sleek black plastic container holding your steaming biryani, paneer curry, or noodles. Whether it’s from a street-side joint or a five-star kitchen, black plastic has quietly become the face of food packaging across Indian cities.

But beyond its polished look lies an important question: what exactly is this plastic made of — and is it safe for your food?

This feature takes a closer look at black plastic in India’s food industry, tracing its rise, unpacking what makes it different from regular plastic, and exploring whether it poses risks that we haven’t fully acknowledged yet.

The rise of black plastic in Indian food delivery

Black plastic containers were not always the norm. Their rise coincided with the explosion of food delivery services in India around the mid-2010s, when platforms like Swiggy, Zomato, Uber Eats, and a wave of cloud kitchens transformed the way urban India accessed restaurant food.

For food businesses working with tight margins, black plastic offered everything they needed — heat resistance, durability, affordability, and a premium appearance that concealed stains or spills from oily and spicy foods.

By 2018–19, black containers had become a staple across metropolitan kitchens. A 2022 packaging waste audit by the Centre for Science and Environment found that over 90 percent of food delivery containers collected in Delhi, Bengaluru, and Mumbai were black plastic trays.

What makes black plastic different?

At first glance, black plastic may not seem any different from the transparent or white plastic often used for salads, dahi, or takeaway boxes. But key differences emerge in how it’s made and how it functions.

To give black plastic its uniform appearance, manufacturers use carbon black pigments. These pigments absorb infrared light, which means black plastic cannot be detected by most recycling machines. As a result, even if the material is technically recyclable, it usually ends up in landfills or gets incinerated.