Pile of Plastic Silverware

Americans alone use and dispose of enough paper and plastic cups, forks, and spoons every year to circle the equator 300 times. Lets break this down, mathematically first (then we can physically break down the paper and plastics). If the circumference of the earth at the equator is 24,901.55 miles (a bit longer than measured at the poles), and there are 365 days in the year, then we dispose of 20,467.027 miles of disposable paper and plastic to go ware each day! That is about enough distance to stretch from the coast of Gabon (the westernmost country in Africa on the equator) all the way around the world to the eastern mouth of the Amazon in South America, every day!!!

If this startles you, consult your daily schedule and you will be surprised with how many disposable items we throw out daily. Here is a scenario for you: a gentleman goes out to lunch during his workday. He orders a sandwich and a side salad, with a fountain beverage. He orders it “to go” so he can sit in the park and eat in a more pleasant space. The food service worker wraps his sandwich in paper, puts it in a plastic bag, puts his salad that is in a plastic container in the plastic bag along with a prepackaged plastic silverware set equipped with paper packages of salt and pepper, and a paper napkin. He sits and enjoys his meal, and ends up throwing out more than half the volume of what he consumed.

An easy solution to ease the impact of disposables is to bring your own silverware to eat with and a bag to put your items in. I want to introduce you to a little product called to-go-ware. The company was started by Stephanie Bernstein who had an epiphany over a cup of ice cream “for here” that was dished in a paper cup with a plastic spoon. She decided to design a small package of utensils (spoon, fork, knife, chopsticks) made of bamboo that one can bring along with them daily. The utensils are kept in a cloth pouch (which serves as your napkin) that wraps up into a small long sleeve. You carry it around with you every day to avoid the result of our convenience culture.

The tragic thing about food service that is different than purchasing clothing, is that you cant really give back a disposable good once it has been given to you. In other words you can’t lick the ice cream off the spoon once they’ve stuck it in your cup and say, “thanks, but I brought my own! Can you reuse this?” It is certainly worth a try in order to stimulate a consideration, but it does not entirely meet food code. So, although to-go-ware is partially effective and a great product, we need to begin even deeper and earlier in the service-to-customer relationship. We need to be more proactive and make sure we tell our server to please leave out as many disposables as entirely possible.

I lived in New York City for the summer of 2003 and I used to go get iced coffee a few mornings of the week around the block. I remember being so startled upon receiving my simple small iced coffee because I also received the added value (waste) of 3 napkins, a straw, and a paper bag that they put my full (yet soon to be empty) disposable plastic cup in. I had to stop going there because they would neglect to meet my request of “no napkins or straw or lid or bag please”. It was the full package deal or nothing. This was when I really began to realize how many little things we throw out every day that often times are never even used. Our consumer driven convenience culture is in part supported by the service industry. Convenience is no longer a conscious decision to leverage; convenience is an assumed desire.

So, to prove the service industry otherwise make sure you request no-few disposables. Try this next time: When you call in you’re “to go” order for family dinner pizza, ask for no disposable silverware, no cups for the soda, and no plates with the pizza. And upon pickup bring your own tray or plate to take the pizza home on as opposed to taking it home in a large cardboard box. Of course there will have to be sacrifices, but like every change, once we get used to them, it no longer seems difficult or different.

To-Go-Ware
Tip o' the Day: Bring Your Own Coffee Mug

Image courtesy of To-Go Ware

Recent headlines have been telling us about a class of chemical detergents or surfactants (nonylphenol ethoxylates, NPE’s) found in many industrial and household cleaners that have been reported to cause male fish to develop female characteristics. This hormone instability is commonly due to foreign “hormone disruptors”. The hormone instability occurs when a foreign chemical is introduced to the body and imitates our natural hormones. The toxins bind to the same sites in our body where natural hormones bind, therein blocking the site from our natural hormones.

This chemical disruption is not going to facilitate spawning! Do we dare to question what these chemicals are doing to us? A World Wildlife Foundation Briefing on the chemical states that "NPEs has been shown to mimic the action of the female hormone oestrogen, and it is a potential factor in the increasing incidence of reproductive organ disorders and decreasing sperm counts in men."

The Sierra Club has asked the Environmental Protection Agency to ban this compound in areas where wastewater treatment plants are not equipped to extract it. The greater question is, how is it getting into our waterways and estuaries and effecting wildlife? In this I respond with: water is the most abundant molecule on earth, it is also referred to as the universal solvent. Combine these two facts and we get a lot of water that is not clean.

The World Wildlife Foundation report on how NPEs are reaching our water environment:

• 37% NPEs via the sewer system
• 46% via sludge spreading on agricultural land

Chemical pollutants that cause hazardous runoff come from lawn fertilizers, industrial pesticides, household cleaners, leaky tailpipes, industrial waste, store byproduct (such as a drycleaners), this runoff is not good. If you take this information inside with the newspaper, you realize that the pollution in your home is due to off gassing from materials you bring in that were treated with chemicals (everything from carpet to magazines) and cleaning products.

So here is the simple solution: just read your labels. We can’t eradicate chemical pollution immediately, but we can start acting consciously by purchasing safe and simple cleaning products, fertilizers, and food. A rule to shop by, if you can’t read it, don’t eat it (remember that 46% of this stuff is spread on our industrial farms-buy organic), and if you can’t pronounce it, don’t spray it on your counter (when you wash your hands this water goes down the drain to the treatment plant…).

One of the scariest commercials on TV right now is for a cleaning company whose products contain compounds we should not come in oral contact with. It shows the mom cleaning the countertop with this product then her child eating cookies from a box that just tipped over onto the same countertop. The mom is relieved because she just cleaned the counter from harmful bacteria, but simultaneously she could have put harmful chemicals on it that are equally as disrupting to her child’s health.

One sixth of the world’s population does not have access to safe drinking water. Most water born problems are due to bacteria that cause them to contract harmful diseases. We don’t need to add chemical hormone disruption to this list. In purchasing safe cleaning products, food, and supporting safe practices we are creating a safer living environment, reducing pollution in our waterways, enabling biodiversity, promoting natural reproduction, and helping to provide safer drinking water for the entire world.

WWF: Nonylphenol Ethoxylates (NPE)

The Green Report: Ban Sought on Detergent Ingredient

Image Credit: Scripps Institution of Oceanography