Fast food, quick waste
The other day I was out with a friend and picked up a Subway sandwich to share for dinner. Assuming we’d share the drink — I don’t normally get one but expected to be wandering the art gallery for awhile — we got a straw. Unwrapping it, I realised the waste involved: a plastic straw and a thin plastic sheath covering it would be thrown out when I was finished. I didn’t even need a straw. We came to the conclusion that bottles (this one was glass; I would have it no other way) should be made like sippy cups.
The sandwich came wrapped in what I can only assume was coated paper, and inside a plastic bag with a couple napkins. All of it ended up in the trash. (I took the juice bottle home and will recycle it when finished.)
So all this got me thinking, fast food sure generates tons of waste!
This is not a new concept, but I’ll admit to a struggle in finding prior information on the topic.
The waste of food is one certain problem, but here I’m dealing with the litter and landfill fodder that results from fast food. I’m not much of an expert on it because I never eat fast food aside from the occasional Subway which I don’t consider fast food for a few reasons. (I’ve walked out with sushi faster!) If we consider the amounts of paper and plastic that result from feeding consumerism, convenience, laziness and “cheap” consumers, we have a real problem. I wonder how much waste in landfills is from fast food packaging? (Vending machines included.)
While it would be unreasonable to remove all of the packaging, switching to biodegradable, non-toxic materials would essentially solve the issues. Making them recyclable helps only to the extent that people volunteer to recycle the waste — and even then, I don’t recall ever seeing a paper recycling box on the streets of Vancouver. The best idea across the board is to simply avoid fast food restaurants altogether.
I see commercials for Wendy’s triple beef burger thing. “Nothing wrong with that” they say. Environmentalists and animal rights activists would have quite the beef to take up with them, pardon the pun. And do people really need 3 wads of beef? I am positive, though I haven’t researched it yet, that the exponential growth of meat consumption and food consumption in general is not in proportion with the population growth of this continent. Yet we somehow have the perception of unlimited bellies and unlimited landfills. It appears the first R of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle has been quite forgotten.
