Facebook internally uses compostable plates and cutlery in their cafeterias; I am wondering if creating those doesn't pollute environment even more than plastics.
American here. What is this "washing of plates and crockery" of which you speak?
Condiments are also available in recyclable glass containers, including 'HP Sauce'. None of these single portion sachets.
As of yet nobody has died of foot and mouth disease, AIDS, rabies, leprosy or any other ailment known to be communicable via forks that have been previously used.
They could do better though, in post mad cow disease Britain you can't feed the food slops to pigs.
From what strange and wondrous land do you come?
It's not even hard to maintain.
FedEx doesn't even allow us to have metal butter knives heh, you know being 'weapons' and all.
In a way, any action in the present pollutes more than an action not taken. But that's hardly a fair comparison.
Taking oil out of "underground vaults" is taking long-sequestered CO2 and moving it into the atmosphere/"carbon cycle". It's plastic that has to be dealt with, or CO2 from burning, or it's carbon dissolved in he ocean, etc.
Growing plants takes energy from the sun to condense CO2 into complex higher-energy compounds. This can be converted, with use of (possibly clean) energy into useful goods. If these goods end up being burned, the CO2 is returned to the atmosphere. If buried, the CO2 is (at least temporarily) sequestered.
Either way, there's no net use of carbon. Yes, the input energy could be from carbon fuel sources, but energy will just get cleaner and cleaner until that's no longer necessary. Even the water needed to grow "biodegradable materials" is plentiful given you have the energy.
The problem with trash isn't the space it takes up while it breaks down. It's that you're taking all the leftovers from petrochemical processing, making them into disposable products, and them dumping them en-mass into the "biosphere". (I consider a dump effectively the "biosphere" when compared to "a mile under rocks sequestered for millions of years after growing from CO2 with solar power".)
Not only does this mean there's more carbon on the surface, but there's all the gross stuff that came up with the oil that has a tendency of not breaking down in the environment, bio-accumulating, etc. (It didn't break down in the first million years... But stuff that never breaks down is such great packaging!!!)