Fast Food Restaurant Waste, Symptom of a Larger Problem in Our Lives
Do you produce much fast-food restaurant waste during the year? Are you often embarrassed at the amount of fast-food restaurant waste you see created?
Within a minute of entering a restaurant, you will notice bags full of paper and plastic being forced into overflowing trash cans.
Leaving the fast-food restaurant with the food is no better. The food is individually wrapped in paper and cardboard that is expected to be thrown away soon after leaving the restaurant.
From the time this cardboard, paper, and plastic are produced, it is used for only a few minutes and then discarded.
Are you like me and feel guilty when you participate in this assault on the environment and basic intelligence? Even if it is 2 or 3 times a year.
Do you look around and see this play out over and over again as you stand in line? What should be done? Is this a symptom of a larger problem?
There was a time I would be embarrassed about eating fast food. Now I am ashamed because I willingly participate in the lunacy of fast food restaurant waste.
If you are like me, you ignore it. Pretend that fast food restaurant waste is not a problem. Even if you never patronize these types of restaurants, you are adversely affected and can do something to help.
In your heart, you know fast food restaurant waste is a problem. Just look around you. Fast food restaurant waste is everywhere. Overflowing trash dumpsters, public trash cans, in your homes, and clogging our waterways.
Why? I would guess the average fast food restaurant waste, including cardboard, paper, and plastic, had a lifespan of less than an hour in use before being discarded. What the hell are we doing? Fast Food Restaurant Waste is growing out of control.
Fast Food Restaurant Waste, Out Of Sight, Out of Mind
Not quite out of sight. You see it. I see it. Well, I thought I saw it. But I never go to the landfills or saw the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Estimates say it is the size of the state of Texas.
Estimates of size range from 700,000 square kilometers (270,000 sq mi) (about the size of Texas) to more than 15,000,000 square kilometers (5,800,000 sq mi) (0.4% to 8% of the size of the Pacific Ocean), or, in some media reports, up to “twice the size of the continental United States”.
Every year in the United States, the paper, aluminum, glass, plastics, and other recyclable materials we throw away would be worth $11.4 billion if recycled. That is a nice chunk of change. I smell a home business here.
Let’s go, guys, and work on this. There are billions in profits in pre- and post-fast food restaurant waste 😉
Single-use food and beverage packaging is a prime source of the estimated 269,000 tons of plastic pollution currently floating around in the world’s oceans, harming turtles, whales, seabirds, and other marine life, and human health as well.
Out of sight, out of mind? Not! Are we out of our minds? Are you embarrassed like me? Fast food restaurant waste is produced to do a job for 5 minutes and then pollutes the world. Five minutes are actual use and DISCARD! In some cases, this waste will then pollute the world for hundreds of years.
You may be discarding trash today that your great, great-grandchildren would have been cleaning up. All because you needed your hamburger to look pretty for the 5-minute trip to your table, home, or car.
There is fast-food restaurant waste that ends up in the trash, on the street curbs, blowing down the street in the wind, or choking animals. There has to be a better way. Conveniently ignoring the problem of whether you consume fast food or not is not a solution. This is a symptom of a larger problem.
A Simple Way Of Life Is Best
I always preferred Diners or mom-and-pop restaurants. They have a more expansive menu minus the fast-food restaurant waste. I don’t mind my burger falling over on my plate rather than being placed in a cardboard for the 30-second trip to my table.
Just think of the fast-food restaurant waste that is produced by millions of meals a day in the United States alone. Cardboard containers, napkins, plastic-coated paper cups, plastic tops, plastic straws, plastic knives, and forks. All are used for a 15-minute meal and discarded.
The Future of Fast Food Restaurant Waste
I hope nothing this irresponsible has a future. If we ignore fast-food restaurant waste, what else are we ignoring in the name of convenience and speed? How much destruction due to convenience and speed are we willing to accept?
Is living a slower and simpler life so bad that we speed toward destruction and death?
I find that living a slower, simpler life is better for health, happiness, and the environment. Fast food restaurant waste is just the tip of the iceberg. Fast food restaurant waste is just a symptom of a larger problem. A larger, hidden, and ignored problem.
The fast-paced, overworked, more stressed lifestyle may be killing more than just people. It may be killing relationships, families, happiness, and the planet, or just the quality of life.
Again, if we ignore fast-food restaurant waste in the name of convenience and speed, what else are we ignoring? For what reasons? Why?
