I could have titled this as just waste created by living daily, but wanted to focus it down a little more. I feel kind of like im the crazy one that sees this insane waste when eating at restaurants, wrappers, cups, drink carriers going right in the trash, billions per day. Its insanity if you think about it.
I’ve at least been never using cup lids or straws and never taking drink carriers when theyre offered (what a massive waste of cardboard!). Then most of the waste is at least paper from the bag and wrapper. Still not great. And yes, I know the solution would be “cook at home!” But that also wastes a lot of freshwater from dish washing, and sometimes it’s just nice to eat somewhere else.
I wonder if this is just something you notice as you get older. Then again older peiple probably waste the most, but I’m just guessing.
I agree, I think part of the subconcious luxury is having lots of stuff used and wasted on you, on the otherhand though cooking food at a central canteen is always going to be more efficient and less wasteful than everyone individually cooking at home so shrugs when I go out I just only support local restaurants and try to avoid the ones that are blatantly wasteful.
I feel like disposable cups, flimsy disposable plates, and crappy plastic utensils are the opposite of luxury. They remind you that you’re eating food made on an assembly line at the lowest possible cost. But maybe that’s just my point of view.
Definitely, but we are talking about the US here, we are conditioned from a young age to become aroused by the imagery of disposable cheap things being used once and then thrown away.
To the US psyche, tacky disposable things are an expression of our superiority and power since we can choose in all of our material wealth to simply toss away the things around us and get new ones as much as we like, for any reason.
A fancy porcelain plate on the otherhand to the US psyche is a symbol of weakness, of an inability to break with the past, of a fragility and fear that there is something beautiful that could be broken that cannot be easily replaced and that must be treated with respect. This is seen as how savages think and act by USians, not consciously necessarily but our worldview was shaped this way for a reason.
Move Fast And Break Things
Do you ever think about how it would be the most natural thing in the world for US “conservatives” to treat the primary concern for conservation as the health of the natural landscapes around us? You have to ask yourself why under the extremophile environment of US society that this isn’t even considered an intellectual incongruity most of the time?