With the solstice past and highs in the 90s, it’s now officially, undeniably summer! That, to me, means picnics and potlucks and parties…lots of events with people and food!
It also means lots of opportunities for waste.
You pass by a shelterhouse on a summer evening, and you’re bound to see a trashcan overflowing with paper plates, plastic cups, a tablecloth or two…all discarded under the belief that those items are disposable. That throwing them out makes them go away. It doesn’t, of course. All that trash—the natural resources used to create it, the emissions from making and transporting it—is coming back to bite us.
But the single-use system is a new one, and people have been sharing food in public forever (literally). So we just need to look back and party like it’s 1923. Or even 1953. Before the days of single-use plastics.
The video below will help remind you how.
Everyone used to come to a potluck with their own plate, utensils, and cup. The dishes at a wedding or house party would have been “real” ones—simply because they had to be. I don’t mean to romanticize the past (though you’ve got to admit that an old-timey picnic is pretty romantic). My point is that the problem of how to serve and eat in public is not a new one, and it’s one we already have an easy solution to.
Our modern challenge is getting ourselves into the habit of coming prepared. But that habit will build with practice—and you’ve got another chance to do it every time you go to or host a party! Take the waste-free party pledge and set yourself a goal of getting single-use eatingware out of your celebrations for good!
-Justine, Full Circle Sustainability
