zerowaste

1520 readers

1 users here now

Discussing ways to reduce waste and build community!

Celebrate thrift as a virtue, talk about creative ways to make do, or show off how you reused something!

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

JacobCoffinWrites@slrpnk.net

Compostable dishes vs washing dishes (slrpnk.net)

submitted 6 days ago by RideAgainstTheLizard@slrpnk.net to c/zerowaste@slrpnk.net

40 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Many cafés and fast food places these days provide disposable dishes and cutlery when you're eating in. This used to infuriate me, but it seems to be improving slightly now as the trend has moved towards using compostable dishes instead of plastic ones.

However, it's still waste. It makes me wonder, what is more costly in the long run? Providing customers with compostable items or running hot dishwashers and using soap and water all day to reuse dishes?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] CrimeDad@lemmy.crimedad.work 7 points 5 days ago (1 children)

This article makes a strong case for using reusable, ceramic plates instead of disposable paper ones. The article treats clean, fresh water as its own thing, valuable in and of itself, which is fair enough. However, it occurred to me that we can assign a CO~2~ cost to it by considering how much CO~2~ is generated as a byproduct of desalination. In other words, if we're doing something to save X amount of water, that's worth Y amount of CO~2~ emmissions. I haven't done the math, but the hypothetical implication is that paper plates are even worse than the article describes and that dishwashing machines are even better. They might actually even payoff their own "carbon debt".

[–] RideAgainstTheLizard@slrpnk.net 4 points 5 days ago

Thank you for sharing this! I am currently in Vancouver, so it was especially relevant :)

I guess the summary is that paper plates cost an amount to make and are used once, whereas a ceramic plate costs a larger amount to make but can be used many times. At this point it becomes a per-use question of which is more costly from an environmental perspective: manufacturing, transporting and tossing every time vs manufacturing once and washing 150 times to pay off the carbon debt of manufacturing. It seems washing is the solution!