The Insidiousness of Single-Use Plastic

It is sooo hard to be eco-friendly sometimes. So hard.

I was in Starbucks the other day month (before covid19), in Victoria, and decided to have a double chocolate chunk fudge brownie. Just cause. I don't need to justify it, do I? No... once in a while is OK... right?

Anyhow... I ordered it warmed up "for here". It comes on a sturdy little plastic plate but then there's a hiccup.

You see a warmed up chocolate chunk brownie gets gooey and is hard to eat with your fingers. Very messy... and dry napkins don't cut it.

The baristas obviously know this because they gave me a fork with my brownie. A reusable plastic fork? No. A reusable metal fork? No.

I received an individually wrapped, flimsy, black, single-use, disposable, plastic fork. There is so much wrong with this... on so many levels.

• Individually wrapped - little sleeve of filmy plastic which instantly gets ripped off and... tossed.
• Flimsy - it's not a fork that I could take home and put in our picnic or camping kit. It can barely handle a succulent warm brownie
• Black - even if it had a recycle logo on it, which it doesn't... black plastic is virtually impossible to recycle at this point in time because the sorting machines can't read the logos.
• Single-use - as noted above, this is a flimsy fork. It is not designed to be reusable. It is designed for single-use.
• Disposable - yep, no dishes to wash, no cutlery to sort, just pure convenience. Disposable convenience.
• Plastic - yup, plastic. They have all sorts of reusable things here... ceramic mugs, sturdy plastic plates, why not metal cutlery?

Camping Cutlery

I got irked and sent in a suggestion to Starbucks. If we are trying to move away from single-use plastics... then the individually wrapped plastic forks have got to go!

I stewed a bit more and then thought... what can I do?

Well... I could pack my own cutlery. Enough of this disposable convenience. I've got the disposable cup thing handled but... now we're into cutlery.

I do have a metal camping spoon, knife, fork set somewhere in the camping gear. They click together and come in a little sleeve... I could dig those out and carry them around in my backpack for just such a moment.

Or... I think we have sturdy plastic camping cutlery somewhere, maybe slightly more accessible... in the laundry room? Let me just go and dig them out... ***10 minutes later*** Voila. Done. They are now riding around in my backpack in a reusable ziploc bag (yes, we wash and reuse our ziploc bags).


It's one Small Step in the fight against disposability.

P.S. Whilst finalizing this blog for publication... I googled "starbucks disposable cutlery" and came across this Globe & Mail article. They are phasing disposable cutlery out this year! Hooray!!!