Friday night came, and the kids were clammering for Chinese. I’m don’t want to never eat out or take in, but I also didn’t want to be wasteful. Turns out I can have my Egg Foo Young and eat it, too.
Here’s a few tips to green up your take out:
1. Ask for boxes: In the old days, all Chinese food came in iconic white paper cartons. Nowadays it comes in flat plastic dishes. But it doesn’t have to. When I ordered our food, I asked if they could put everything in boxes. The woman taking our order didn’t have much of a problem with the request. She switcher our main dishes easily. The only issue was the egg drop soup and the moo shoo. Those, she told me, needed to come in plastic. So I didn’t order them.
2. Skip the sauces: If you’re ordering at home don’t make garbage with those little packets — use your own soy sauce. Or, if you’re like us and don’t use them or have a backlog, ask them not to bring them.
3. Recycle what you can: I don’t think you can recycle the paper cartons, but in NYC you can recycle the metal handles with your cans. Also, if you decide to order something in plastic, you can bring those plastic containers to Whole Foods (they are #5 and therefore can be recycled).
Take home the green
The ask and you shall receive a green solution worked equally as well on Saturday morning when we hit Kitchenette Restaurant for brunch. The piña colada crepes and baked blueberry French toast were both delicious but a bit too much for the kids to finish. When I requested a non- plastic box for leftovers, the waiter initially said they didn’t have any. When I looked distresed, he thought for a mintue.
“Hang on,” he said. A moment later he came back with a brown paper box from their bakery. It was that simple.
Over the last ten years, the organic movement has gone mainstream because the powers-that-be believed that there was a market there. We know that Walmart and Costco’s organics has been not a perfect solution, but it can be argued that mainstream organic availability has certainly raised many people’s consciousness that organic exists.
The strongest way we can make an impact and and statement is by voting with our dollars. If we tell restaurant owners clearly and politely, “I’m not going to buy their food that if it comes in environmentally unfriendly plastic,” their economic incentive to use “cheap” plastic container will have changes.
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