zerowaste

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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!

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Compostable dishes vs washing dishes (slrpnk.net)

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

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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?

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[–] RideAgainstTheLizard@slrpnk.net 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, it's similar to the debate around whether paper bags or tote bags are more eco friendly. As others mentioned here in regards to dishwashers, what likely matters most is how many times an item must be used before it offsets the environmental cost of it's own production.

[–] orb360@lemmy.ca 2 points 4 days ago

Perhaps how long it lasts before breaking down after it's lifespan as well... I.e. if all of humanity disappeared how long to return to a non-human impacted state?

Plastics and other such pollutants will last for millions of years... So regardless of useful lifespan, pollutant lifespan is far larger.

If everything we ever used was either wood or paper based, then even if useful lifespan were decades, pollutant lifespan before breaking down would be less than a century. How many times should you use something when the harmful particles it's made of will persist in the ecosystem for 10 million years?

Idk which is better, or how to measure the difference though.