Fast Food Restaurant Waste, Symptom of a Larger Problem in Our Lives

Do you produce a lot of fast-food restaurant waste during the year? Are you often embarrassed by how much 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—literally within minutes.

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.

When cardboard, paper, and plastic are produced, they are 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 essential intelligence? Even if it is 2 or 3 times a year.

Do you look around and see this repeatedly as you stand in line? What should you do? Is this a symptom of a more significant problem?

There was a time when I would be embarrassed about eating fast food. I am ashamed because I willingly participate in fast food restaurant waste lunacy.

If you are like me, you ignore it. You pretend that fast-food restaurant waste is not a problem. Even if you never patronize these 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, and in your homes are clogging our waterways.

Why? I would guess the average cardboard, paper, and plastic fast food restaurant waste 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

It’s not quite out of sight. You see it. I see it. Well, I thought I saw it. But I never went to the landfills or saw the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which estimates say 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 they were recycled instead. 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 in the world’s oceans, harming turtles, whales, seabirds, other marine life, and human health.

Out of sight, out of mine? 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 that your great-grandchildren would have been cleaning up today—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 more significant 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 waste of fast-food restaurants. I don’t mind my burger falling over on my plate rather than being placed in cardboard for the 30-second trip to my table.

Just think of the fast-food restaurant waste produced by millions of meals daily in the United States: 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 we speed toward destruction and death?

Living a slower, simpler life is better for health, happiness, and the environment. Fast food restaurant waste is just the tip of the iceberg—a symptom of a more significant problem—a more prominent hidden and ignored problem.

The fast-paced, overworked, and overstuffed lifestyle may kill more than just people. It may be killing relationships, families, happiness, the planet, or just quality of life.

Again, what else are we ignoring if we ignore fast-food restaurant waste in the name of convenience and speed? For what reasons? Why?