Singapore eatery offers takeaway tiffins in green bid

SINGAPORE (Reuters Life!) - A popular Singapore eatery is bringing back the tiffin to entice customers keen to save the planet while enjoying a blast from the past.

The tiered, metal food containers that are still extensively used in India were popular in Singapore in the 1960s and 70s.

Banquet, a chain of food courts which uses plastic containers for takeaway orders, said it would switch to tiffins by February in a bid to reduce the amount of environmentally unfriendly carriers leaving its 30 outlets, a newspaper said on Monday.

According to The Straits Times, each outlet uses about 27,000 plastic containers for takeaways every month.

Noorhayati Moehd Saide, Banquet's marketing executive said using tiffins will bring "back an air of nostalgia".

Customers interested in having tiffin takeaways put down a deposit that will be refunded when the carrier is returned.

(Reporting by Melanie Lee; editing by Geert De Clercq and Miral Fahmy)