I could have titled this as just waste created by living daily, but wanted to focus it down a little more. I feel kind of like im the crazy one that sees this insane waste when eating at restaurants, wrappers, cups, drink carriers going right in the trash, billions per day. Its insanity if you think about it.
I’ve at least been never using cup lids or straws and never taking drink carriers when theyre offered (what a massive waste of cardboard!). Then most of the waste is at least paper from the bag and wrapper. Still not great. And yes, I know the solution would be “cook at home!” But that also wastes a lot of freshwater from dish washing, and sometimes it’s just nice to eat somewhere else.
I wonder if this is just something you notice as you get older. Then again older peiple probably waste the most, but I’m just guessing.
But that also wastes a lot of freshwater from dish washing
I’m going to pick on this one point. A high end dishwasher appliance only use 2.4 gallons (9L) of fresh water, while even average dishwashers use about 5 to 6 gallons. To put that in perspective an 8 minute shower likely uses 17 gallons.
So dishwashing is a tiny tiny waste, if you can even call it a waste.
Another point of (minor) contention for me is the fact that fresh water isn’t a limited resource in many parts of the world. Sure, some places it is, but a default of needing to save on water seems like a very limited frame of mind in the same way one shouldn’t assume everywhere needs to focus on retaining building heat by recycling waste heat.
Compared to throwing away disposable plates and cutlery, it’s a no-brainer.
I agree dishwashers are efficient. It also sounds like you are talking about a home model. A commercial model in a kitchen is about 2 to 4 times more efficient. We are talking like maybe a gallon per 100 dishes kind of thing.
Your point is spot-on. Fully agreed: modern dishwashers are way more energy- and water-efficient than manually washing dishes. Like at least an order of magnitude.
I personally struggle with this one for different reasons. Energy and water consumption are a very tight concern since I live on a sailboat. I can’t just crank the tap to get more water. Marine health is also a concern since, ya know, it’s all around me, and I eat some of these critters around my boat. Surfactants in detergent are deeply problematic in the environment and are not removed by most wastewater treatment. Moreover, surfactants impede wastewater treatment because of the emulsification interfere with aerobic treatment (Poland seems to be actively working on the problem). FWIW, manual dish detergent also has surfactants, especially SDS/SLS, so manual washing is not a panacea.
I don’t think there is a “right” answer to be had. But it sticks in my craw both ways.
Good to know!! I had heard this once
You had me until “wastes a lot of freshwater from dishwashing” now you are just picking things to get mad about.
Yes I agree, eating out, specially fastfood is super wastefull for no reason at all.
Generally there should be more products offered as unpacked versions: where you can bring your own conatiner and fill out the things you need at the store and pay in kilos / litres and not in pieces. Unfortunately we are not there yet.
I’m not so sure eating out a restaurant that doesn’t use disposable utensils/dishes is really wasteful at all. The only difference i can think of is if you drove a long distance to get there. But it might actually be more efficient from an energy consumption perspective. You might have to heat up your oven just for a meal for a few people but they are going be cooking up a lot of stuff at once. I’d say the much bigger factors are a) are you wasting good and b) what kind of food are you eating.
All of the packaging needed for a lot of food at home as well, I feel like restaurants probably throw away less packaging comparatively with how much they get in bulk.
All of the plastic bottles for sauces, plastic containers for spices, meat and certain produce items that come packaged in plastic and styrofoam, plastic bags for bread and rice and pasta and junk food. Frozen items packaged in plastic in boxes that took energy to keep frozen before we spend energy to heat them within a minute or two, just because we’re too lazy to cook today.
Not to say that restaurants waste no packaging, but they’d use less given the volume of supplies they source, and likely prepare more in-house rather than buying pre-prepared.
I’d say restaurants are probably way more efficient in terms of waste and energy consumption than the average household. Cooking in bulk for a lot of people is better than a lot of people individually cooking for themselves.
In Canada we have this thing called “bulk barn” (a brand of bulk food stores) that you pay by weight, as much or as little as you want, but you put each item you get into its own plastic bag.
You can bring your own containers. They will tare them (ie weigh them and mark them with their mass) and then you can fill them as much or little as you like. On Sundays, you get an extra discount for bringing your own containers.
And yes, I know the solution would be “cook at home!” But that also wastes a lot of freshwater from dish washing
I don’t think this is a good point. Just by living you’re going to be using resources of some kind, it’s simply unavoidable. I would worry less about trying to consume zero resources and more about particularly harmful things, like single-use plastics. Especially since fresh water is not an issue in some places, like where I am.
Honestly, if you’re going to a table service restaurant, it might be even better than eating at home. You’re not going to get much plastic waste from single use items like you would with fast food, and because of the scale of the operation I could believe that restaurants are creating less waste per meal than individuals cooking at home. Think of a case of chicken breast versus individually packaged ones and the amount of plastic each uses, for example.
Sounds like you’re describing fast food rather than restaurants. Going out to eat, for me, is going to a restaurant. I don’t consider that super wasteful. Restaurants use washable plates and silverware. The travel with the vehicle is wasteful. But it’s not especially wasteful.
Yes. Fast food is super wasteful. Especially if you’re in a region that still uses styrofoam. But it’s probably less wasteful than it was when any of us were children.
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…are we describing the same restaurants? Unironically all the restaurants I go to generate less waste than me cooking at home lol…
As in, every time I go to a restaurant they would always bring in washable dishes/utensils, and I assume they would probably have to fill the dishwashers to the brim (in contrast to me living alone & only filling up half each time). The one time I ordered a takeout, the restaurant put all the food in insanely high-quality takeout boxes that were freezer and microwave friendly, I used them for meal prep for a full year…
Granted these are fine dining and all cost a fortune. I guess fast food/takeouts do describe that a bit better
It should be noted that “microwave safe” containers are not necessarily food safe. It literally means they will not melt or warp the microwave.
Out to eat… Bag and wrapper? Straws and cups? That’s not going out to eat.
I came to say actually its a bit more efficient but it sounds like you mean fast food. I mean when I hear out to eat I think waitress, silver and dinnerware type thing. I mean even casual dining like tgif or such and heck steak and shake you can sit down and get that. Also if you have ever seen technology connections, dishwashers are insanely efficient water wise reusing it over and over till it gets dirty.
Funny enough,you produce far more waste and environmental impact if you cook alone or for a small household.
From an environmental perspective a communal cafeteria with set times is actually king.
Do you have a source on that, I know a saw a source a while ago showing that meal delivery service generate less waste due to less food waste than grocery stores have. But in my experience reastaurants have a ton of food waste
I feel like using that statistic is misleading in terms of efficiency just from the factor of “gallons of gas per pound of food transported”.
Sure there’s spoilage from product going bad, but marginal efficiency gains there are so far down the list of things to worry about that they’re not really worth going into. The reason people don’t have food isn’t because enough isn’t produced, it’s because they’re not allowed to have it because they don’t have enough money. Less food spoiling doesn’t fix that problem.
Go to a real restaurant??
You’re talking about fast food. And even them are slowly (very slowly) moving toward reusable/washable stuff.
Some fast food, if eating there (not to-go) have limited waste, as far as the customer side is concerned. Actual restaurants, aside from straws everything’s reusable. And they’re probably a bit more efficient than cooking at home, too.
It might just be a case of stopping supporting places that are not moving in line with the time.
I agree, I think part of the subconcious luxury is having lots of stuff used and wasted on you, on the otherhand though cooking food at a central canteen is always going to be more efficient and less wasteful than everyone individually cooking at home so shrugs when I go out I just only support local restaurants and try to avoid the ones that are blatantly wasteful.
I feel like disposable cups, flimsy disposable plates, and crappy plastic utensils are the opposite of luxury. They remind you that you’re eating food made on an assembly line at the lowest possible cost. But maybe that’s just my point of view.
Definitely, but we are talking about the US here, we are conditioned from a young age to become aroused by the imagery of disposable cheap things being used once and then thrown away.
To the US psyche, tacky disposable things are an expression of our superiority and power since we can choose in all of our material wealth to simply toss away the things around us and get new ones as much as we like, for any reason.
A fancy porcelain plate on the otherhand to the US psyche is a symbol of weakness, of an inability to break with the past, of a fragility and fear that there is something beautiful that could be broken that cannot be easily replaced and that must be treated with respect. This is seen as how savages think and act by USians, not consciously necessarily but our worldview was shaped this way for a reason.
Move Fast And Break Things
Do you ever think about how it would be the most natural thing in the world for US “conservatives” to treat the primary concern for conservation as the health of the natural landscapes around us? You have to ask yourself why under the extremophile environment of US society that this isn’t even considered an intellectual incongruity most of the time?
I mean I get where you’re coming from, but if you consider the water to wash dishes wasted, I’m afraid there isn’t really any food that is not wasteful, except maybe berries straight from the bush…
I just drop down on a deer from a tree, eat its liver, and lick the blood off my knife.
You better eat the whole deer. If you leave the hooves behind, that’s too wasteful.
Damn rights, need those for glue. You leave the hooves alone, they’re mine.
I’m disgusted by it.
But I’ve also reached the point where I’ve accepted that humanity will absolutely destroy this planet and there’s not much that we can do about it.
I still try to minimize my waste, but I do so simply to make myself feel better in the short term, not because I think it’s actually going to make a difference in the end.
Yeah on one hand it’s like, screw it, waste all i want and fuck the rest. But then I’d be a boomer
Single use plastic should he illegal for most things. Yes, it might be inconvenient to have to carry your own thermos or whatever, but filling the ocean with plastic is worse than inconvenient
Freshwater is not wasted. Hot water is wasted unless your water heating comes from renewable energy (rare), so wash as cold as possible, but freshwater is not wasted. It is trivial (though it does cost money!) to treat waste water from your cleaning (including your toilets) and turn it back into drinkable fresh water. I know cities generally dump their treated sewage back into the river, but it is drinkable water and the next city downstream will take it in.
