Single-use plastic is a ticking time bomb for the environment. Avoid it wherever and whenever possible. – Jennifer Nini
I am from India and I recently visited the US for attending a few business events/conferences.
One of the events organized near San Francisco and I attended, had close to 10K attendees.
Breakfast, lunch, and evening snacks were served during the three-day event.
What surprised me was the amount of single-use disposable plastic cutlery that was used for consuming food during the event. Over the 3 days of the event, close to 100K sets of single-use disposable plastic cutlery were used and thrown into the garbage.
These disposable plastic cutleries are usually thrown into the garbage along with unconsumed leftover food, food containers, and other waste such as paper and cans.
So, I am sure it is not easy to segregate and recycle these plastics. Producing new plastic materials is now cheaper than recycling, anyway. So all these 300K items (100K set X 3 items in a pack, spoon, knife, and fork), as I understand, would hit the earth as a landfill or garbage dump.
Each year 40,000,000,000 plastic forks, spoons, and knives are used and thrown away each year
Puente Hills Landfill, the largest rubbish dump in America is over 150 meters of garbage and is as tall as some of the highest skyscrapers in Los Angeles.
It is expected that it will take more than two hundred to three hundred years for plastic cutlery, such as plastic forks, knives, and spoons, to entirely decompose if exposed to the sun (photodegrade).
However, when buried deep in a landfill, it can take thousands of years to decompose. During the process of decomposition, certain compounds are emitted and they are hazardous to human health and to any life on earth. So, this single-use disposable plastic cutlery has a nice long time and a long life to slowly decompose and touch so many future generations!
I was talking about just one event. The remaining two I attended had the same situation – large use of single-use disposable plastic cutlery for food consumption.
I also saw that single-use disposable plastic cutlery was freely used at home parties and small events in the communities. So, billions of forks, knives, and spoons are thrown away each year into the earth.
One solution to this issue is to bring your own eating implements. For centuries people had traveled carrying their own set of personal knives, forks, and spoons.
If some of you stare at me and think this is difficult, I would propose the ‘Indian solution’ – use hands. In India, people use their hands to consume food. They usually wash their hands before touching the food and once done eating they wash their hands again. You use a little bit of water to wash your hands and water recycles itself quickly. Earth is a great recycler and it is free. Though many in the US, would raise their eyes at this idea of using hands for feeding ourselves, it is an idea whose time has come.
People think hands can be dirty or can contain germs. A quick wash before each meal can help in having clean hands and it just takes 30 seconds max and a little bit of water.
Imagine, most of the Indian population of 1b+ eat with their hands and they have not died or had any major issues. They are alive kicking and doing great. On one hand, we are bothered about the cleanliness of our hands, but we never bother about the chemicals and microplastics present in single-use disposable plastic cutlery. Do you think they are properly cleaned before packing? Take a guess.
Eating with hands is easy and is a great sustainable idea! Do not pour millions of dollars into researching sustainability. Some ideas are just in front of us, do not cost at all, and are great. One such idea is using hands for eating. If you are currently using single-use disposable plastic cutlery, try using your hands instead, It will take 3-4 times for you to get used to it and be mentally comfortable. But once done, you are helping hundreds of future generations to healthy contamination-free earth to live. That is a huge contribution compared to mental discomfort for a few days.
Each year 40,000,000,000 plastic forks, spoons, and knives are used and thrown away each year. That is a lot of zeros!
Maybe you think, “It’s just one fork,” but multiplied by millions upon millions, those plastic utensils are terrible for the environment. Some estimates put the number of individual plastic utensils wasted at 40 billion per year in the United States alone.
After just one single use, most of them are thrown out and end up in landfills and in our waterways.
Some of them are zero-use plastics. For example, I just used a spoon and need to throw away the unused knife and fork as well.
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