Sustainability: Fork-Knife-Spoon

Good morning everyone! Today I’m going to talk about one of my favorite contraptions for #priuslife which is actually great for life in general. The fork, knife, spoon set. I originally got this to reduce the amount of plastic and single-use cutlery I was consuming. 

Since I became conscious of my impact on the environment in the year 2000, I’ve been working to decrease my footprint and bring sustainability into as many aspects of my life as possible. The fork, knife, spoon set was a simple and elegant solution to the problem of single-use plastic cutlery.

It’s estimated that every year 40 billion single use plastic utensils are thrown out every year.

Divided by the 333 million Americans, that’s about 120 pieces per person per year.

According to Forbes, plastic cutlery is one of the items that won’t ever be recycled because they are too lightweight, too small, and too contaminated.

Which means that this type of single-use plastic just ends up in a landfill or some other random location. Plastic takes about 450 years to decompose meaning, every year the number of single-use cutlery on the planet is increasing. 

If you want to understand the real cost of this cutlery convenience, Andrew Bernier’s paper “Living the Life of a Plastic Fork” he goes into detail on the costs of the initial production of the fork, supply chain & distribution, and finally disposal. 

Just because single-use cutlery is considered disposable, does not mean that it’s sustainable or good for the environment.

It’s estimated that since the 1950s one billion tons of plastic have been discarded. 

If you’re interested in other life hacks to reduce your footprint you can check out habitsofwaste.org where they empower people to change their mission is to clean up the planet one “habit of waste” at a time.

Having your own cutlery set is a cool way to let others know that you care about the earth. It also means you are always prepared for a meal, and you can be sure that your silverware is always cleaned to your standards 😉

References:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/lauratenenbaum/2019/07/16/plastic-cutlery-is-terrible-for-the-environment-and-we-dont-need-to-have-it-delivered/?sh=491fcbf4019c