I have one of those jobs that requires me to bring my lunch every day, and, every day, I bring something ready-made and frozen. Easy? yes! Delicious? sometimes... good in a global sense? not really... :-/
The problem with food today is that most of it is cursed with excessive packaging. Is it necessary for my Enchilada Pie to be in a cardboard tray topped with plastic and in an additional cardboard box? uh...
Ok, most days I just eat a burrito, which is packaged in 1 simple layer of plastic. HOWEVER, a burrito every day would generate 365 plastic packages. If that number is altered to include the occasional package of cookies, yogurt, bottled water, or any other of the endless single serving options available in grocery stores today...I shudder to think of the trash produced. The average American creates 4.6 lbs of trash a day. That's a total of 230 million tons from the country in one year. Imagine if I just put all of it in a hole in my backyard. or in your backyard. After all, a landfill is, for all intents and purposes, just a hole in the ground with trash in it. Most people just aren't concerned because it's out-of-sight-out-of-mind. Unfortunately, landfills will eventually fill completely because holes by their very nature are finite. Where will we put our trash then?
Fortunately, 70% of our trash is reusabe or recyclable, and our trash production doesn't have to be as extreme as it is in the first place. The only cool extreme hobbies are extreme couponing or extreme angling (Actually, I love the show, RiverMonsters, truth be told.) Anyway, my point is that most food packaging is excess and, as such, is unnecessary trash. SO, today, I ate a trash free lunch: a chicken sandwich, which I carried in a reusable rubbermaid tub; an actual cup of water; and an apple whose core I ate. I didn't even use a napkin; I simply washed my hands and dried them with a towel. It was actually so easy to make my lunch trash free that I feel like I cheated on my good action today. But, then I remind myself how many plastic burrito wrappers and enchilada pie boxes will stay out of landfills if I keep this up, and suddenly trash-free lunch doesn't seem so insignificant. Maybe I'll get a snazzy lunchbox!
P.S. Click on the word recyclable. It's a quick read, and the statistics are a little mind-blowing.
The problem with food today is that most of it is cursed with excessive packaging. Is it necessary for my Enchilada Pie to be in a cardboard tray topped with plastic and in an additional cardboard box? uh...
Ok, most days I just eat a burrito, which is packaged in 1 simple layer of plastic. HOWEVER, a burrito every day would generate 365 plastic packages. If that number is altered to include the occasional package of cookies, yogurt, bottled water, or any other of the endless single serving options available in grocery stores today...I shudder to think of the trash produced. The average American creates 4.6 lbs of trash a day. That's a total of 230 million tons from the country in one year. Imagine if I just put all of it in a hole in my backyard. or in your backyard. After all, a landfill is, for all intents and purposes, just a hole in the ground with trash in it. Most people just aren't concerned because it's out-of-sight-out-of-mind. Unfortunately, landfills will eventually fill completely because holes by their very nature are finite. Where will we put our trash then?
Fortunately, 70% of our trash is reusabe or recyclable, and our trash production doesn't have to be as extreme as it is in the first place. The only cool extreme hobbies are extreme couponing or extreme angling (Actually, I love the show, RiverMonsters, truth be told.) Anyway, my point is that most food packaging is excess and, as such, is unnecessary trash. SO, today, I ate a trash free lunch: a chicken sandwich, which I carried in a reusable rubbermaid tub; an actual cup of water; and an apple whose core I ate. I didn't even use a napkin; I simply washed my hands and dried them with a towel. It was actually so easy to make my lunch trash free that I feel like I cheated on my good action today. But, then I remind myself how many plastic burrito wrappers and enchilada pie boxes will stay out of landfills if I keep this up, and suddenly trash-free lunch doesn't seem so insignificant. Maybe I'll get a snazzy lunchbox!
P.S. Click on the word recyclable. It's a quick read, and the statistics are a little mind-blowing.
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