5 ms·
Facebook internally uses compostable plates and cutlery in their cafeterias; I am wondering if creating those doesn't pollute environment even more than plastic
by bitL 8y ago
Facebook internally uses compostable plates and cutlery in their cafeterias; I am wondering if creating those doesn't pollute environment even more than plastics.
- Theodores 8y agoIn the canteen I use they wash plates and crockery. Imagine if that practice came to America.
- rhapsodic 8y ago>In the canteen I use they wash plates and crockery. Imagine if that practice came to America American here. What is this "washing of plates and crockery" of which you speak?
- Theodores 8y agoThey also wash the cutlery! Condiments are also available in recyclable glass containers, including 'HP Sauce'. None of these single portion sachets. As of yet nobody has died of foot and mouth disease, AIDS, rabies, leprosy or any other ailment known to be communicable via forks that have been previously used. They could do better though, in post mad cow disease Britain you can't feed the food slops to pigs.
- rhapsodic 8y ago>They also wash the cutlery! From what strange and wondrous land do you come?
- maxxxxx 8y agoI work in the US and it drives me nuts that at work almost everything they use is disposable. They could easily get a dishwasher. Instead every lunch produces a huge pile of trash.
- bigpicture 8y agoI work in Chicago and our office of 75 people has 2 dishwashers, 3 refrigerators, 3 microwaves, multiple drawers and cabinets full of plates, drink ware and utensils (including chef's knives and other cutlery). It's not even hard to maintain.
- ryanmercer 8y ago>including chef's knives and other cutlery). FedEx doesn't even allow us to have metal butter knives heh, you know being 'weapons' and all.
- Arnt 8y agoThey are made basically like plastic, except that the process has extra steps at the start, right? Plastic uses plants that grew long ago and stored in underground vaults called "oil fields", whereas the compostable stuff uses plants grown now, grown and processed with effort right now? In a way, any action in the present pollutes more than an action not taken. But that's hardly a fair comparison.
- kazen44 8y agoAlso, people heavily underestimate the impact argricultue has on the enviroment.
- darken 8y agoThis is where the whole `sustainable` resources concept really tips the scales. Taking oil out of "underground vaults" is taking long-sequestered CO2 and moving it into the atmosphere/"carbon cycle". It's plastic that has to be dealt with, or CO2 from burning, or it's carbon dissolved in he ocean, etc. Growing plants takes energy from the sun to condense CO2 into complex higher-energy compounds. This can be converted, with use of (possibly clean) energy into useful goods. If these goods end up being burned, the CO2 is returned to the atmosphere. If buried, the CO2 is (at least temporarily) sequestered. Either way, there's no net use of carbon. Yes, the input energy could be from carbon fuel sources, but energy will just get cleaner and cleaner until that's no longer necessary. Even the water needed to grow "biodegradable materials" is plentiful given you have the energy.
- olyjohn 8y agoLook closely... they are "commercially compostable" which means heating them to something like 200 degrees for multiple hours. Throw them out in your compost pile or a landfill, and they'll still be there forever, or at least a really long time.
- darken 8y agoI suspect balancing "speed to degrade" with "stability when used" is something that will consistently improve with technology. (Not to mention manufacturing.) The problem with trash isn't the space it takes up while it breaks down. It's that you're taking all the leftovers from petrochemical processing, making them into disposable products, and them dumping them en-mass into the "biosphere". (I consider a dump effectively the "biosphere" when compared to "a mile under rocks sequestered for millions of years after growing from CO2 with solar power".) Not only does this mean there's more carbon on the surface, but there's all the gross stuff that came up with the oil that has a tendency of not breaking down in the environment, bio-accumulating, etc. (It didn't break down in the first million years... But stuff that never breaks down is such great packaging!!!)