Upstream describes itself as a change agency for reuse. It is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, it started the Skip the Stuff campaign whose policy has since become law in New York City and New Jersey, and it publishes the research most often cited when someone asks whether reusables actually save money. For a restaurant, three parts of its site matter.
The Reuse for Onsite Dining library
A collection of guides, webinars and case studies on switching dine-in service to reusables. It links to the foodware purchasing guide that ReThink Disposable and Surfrider wrote, and to the Chart-Reuse calculator that estimates savings, payback and waste avoided for a specific restaurant.
Reuse Wins
Published in 2021, with an executive summary updated in 2023, Reuse Wins modelled the cost of disposables against reusables for dine-in service across restaurant types. Its headline finding is that switching on-site dining to reusables always ends up saving money, once the recurring cost of buying disposables is set against the one-off cost of durable foodware and the running cost of washing.
The directory and the map
Two tools answer the questions that stop most restaurants: where to buy, and who will wash. The Reuse Business Directory lists suppliers of durable foodware and operators of returnable-container systems. The Wash Hub Map shows roughly forty commercial dishwashing operators across the United States and Canada, which is what makes reusable takeout containers possible for a restaurant without a dish pit to spare.
Also worth knowing
Upstream's podcast, Indisposable, had reached episode 189 by August 2026 and interviews the people running reuse systems in practice. For an organisation considering a returnable-container scheme, the page in this section on returnable systems describes the operators and the PR3 standards they are built to.