Yesterday, while exploring the “Let’s Eat Outdoors” cookbook, the subject of paper plates came up. The “Dixie Cups” page in that little cookbook lists a number of benefits of using them:
- They let you devote more time and attention to your guests, help you avoid embarrassing breakage of good china and crystal, make after-party clean-up a breeze.
- Instead of taking along containers which have to be repacked and lugged home again, try this: Place [your lunch] on Dixie Plates. Cover each plate with another, tape tops to bottoms. No dishes to wash when you get home!
- Bring the [Spam-aroni] salad in Dixie Cold Drink Cups, one for each person. Easy to carry, easy to serve!
I love how simple things like cookbooks can provide a window into an earlier time. Although the ad copy doesn’t explicitly say so, it’s pretty obvious that Dixie Cups and Plates are intended to be used once and thrown away. This ad – the whole cookbook, really – is an advertising homage to the doctrine of convenience and disposability.
But, as we mentioned yesterday, while disposable table ware may have been “socially correct” at one time, it’s becoming less so now as convenience finds itself increasingly opposed to responsibility, and disposability collides more and more violently with sustainability.
So, our questions to you today: What are some other things that you have seen go from “socially correct” to “sustainably incorrect?” What conveniences have given way? And what are the solutions you have adopted (or would like to adopt) to bridge those gaps?
