The $0.006 Object in a Sushi Container
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Anyway, far from being an "important job" this is an example of inexcusable waste. Casually using throw-away plastic junk for something as pointless as "separating the flavors", when I'm just going to shove both of those things into my mouth anyway without bothering to rinse out my mouth and cleanse my palate with bland crackers, is beyond the pale. With our precarious global environmental situation, we should be criticizing not apologizing for frivolous waste like this.
And for this matter, stop giving me free plastic forks or chopsticks every time. I own my own reusable stainless steel utensils.
When I order a dinner for delivery to my home, I'm likely going to use my own plates/knives. If I'm ordering via phone or pickup, I can decline the default forks/chopsticks but using the UI it's nto possible without a "comment" and some restaurants don't even read that.
Yes there's already waste in the packaging but often that's compostable these days.
From the company's perspective, though, the number of complaints from customers who didn't get ketchup, napkins, cutlery, etc. greatly exceeds the number of complaints from people who received too many extras. Given this, drivers are trained (and primed through the rating system) to grab all of the extra items they can.
Now, reducing the consumption of oil/gas could reduce plastic as a byproduct and increase costs in which case the market would self-correct.
You should also consider the unique harm plastic waste in particular does to wildlife.
My point was that if you aren't littering, then the net cost to the environment isn't such a huge thing. I'm also not a fan of government subsidies in general. Your point really isn't a subsidy, it's a means of greater use, which is generally considered a good thing. Unless you'd rather have more environmental waste that isn't used for any secondary purpose.
I'd love to see more/better efforts with regards to wildlife conservation, not littering etc. I like to do road trips while on vacation. Seeing the shear amount of litter on roadways, in the mountains and everywhere but a proper trashcan that will get disposed of reasonably is upsetting. Frankly, I think that getting society as a whole to respect their environment and other people's property (littering and vandalism) would go further to improving things than not.
Then there is the ecological issue of using and disposing of cutlery and plates after one use. Why would the harm of that need to be explained in 2019? Most household waste in the US goes to landfills.
Another issue is personal health. Plastic is continually emitting tiny amounts of toxic chemicals and leaching plasticizers and other endocrine disrupters/suspected carcinogens into the air and anything it comes into contact with. This differs from the glass and ceramic dishes that I purchase for use at home.
Seriously we (family of 5) run the dishwasher most nights - got the kids trained to do their part, so it's not much more work.
Do you like throwing away plastic wantonly?
Nevermind the trash you're promoting the production of by accumulating. You already have a reusable, probably more comfortable set of cutlery which has paid itself over a thousands times. As long as you have it, you don't need plastic stuff: no need to use it, no need to hoard it, no need to rely on it – 'cause you already have all the stuff you need at a moment's notice.
Doing the dishes is easy. The fact that I have to rack my head about which kind of plastic is reusable and which isn't, then have to separate the two – knowing that I'm throwing the kind of stuff away that will cause noticable damage to the environment when compounded per capita – seems like such a goddamn mess compared to having a ceramic plate ready for use.
There is a dishwasher but I'm using it to store post and as a wine rack.
I keep all the extra cutlery and napkins I get in a drawer and reuse them. Haven't had to buy paper towels in a long time.
True, but there's a difference between saving upwards of 30 minutes cooking time vs saving 30 seconds washing a plate...
Once, when I though that people might regularly use plastic I thought: "if that's not a mental health red flag I don't know what it is"
The article seems to convey that plastic is considered inferior to vegetable matter for this. It is cheaper, which actually suggests less resource consumption. Plenty of plastic and other resources (petroleum itself) would be expended to provide lettuce or bamboo for this instead of PET, with even less efficiency since it’s perishable. It would be worth comparing whether it would save resources.
Another option would be to redesign the container to reduce any need for a separator. A new design could end up using just as much plastic as the current tray + the grass - who knows.
Cheaper so long as you ignore the externalities of long-term use of disposable plastic. Using a little piece of harmlessly biodegradable waxed paper instead might be "more expensive" in strict manufacturing terms but would the cheaper option if the externalities of plastic were properly taxed.
Regardless, I am asserting that the "grass" divider is purely aesthetic and should be left out completely. The supposed practical purpose is transparent BS, those flavors are going to get mixed in my mouth more than they would in the tray merely by touching each other.
I personally appreciate the hand drawn look and artwork, but supplementing that with a text version would be an improvement for many reasons.
[0] https://bioresources.cnr.ncsu.edu/BioRes_08/BioRes_08_4_6501...
This could be made much more accessible by just including appropriate captions, and doing so would benefit a large part of the community.
As it was, trying to read the handwriting was definitely annoying.
I thought maybe since there's no descriptive text alongside images, that there was probably something in the alt tags. However, the alt tags for each image are just empty quotes. For all intents and purposes this is just a blank page for anyone using a screen reader.
Hey everyone, use descriptive alt tags for your images. It takes 10 seconds and makes a big difference.
Maybe an attempt should have been made to do the story justice then. Discuss where these plastic things came from, who got the idea and when? How did their use spread? And the story doesn't even contain any hint of environmental criticism.
It's an incredibly weak article, and you can tell the editors knew that because of the vague headline they created for it, meant to make people curious. If the headline said "The $0.006 'Plastic Grass' in Your Sushi Container Is Doing an Important Job" far fewer people would have clicked on the article because 'it keeps food separate' is self-evident to anybody who's ever seen it. Better yet would be "The $0.006 'Plastic Grass' in Your Sushi Container Is For Keeping Food Separate." The brief digression into the original bamboo leaf form was slightly interesting, but this article should have gone much deeper to justify itself.
I wish there were a day to send feedback to the NYT saying "please do not do this again".
My handwriting is terrible too so maybe I shouldn't complain, but that's why I type.
You may want to see a doctor.
At the bottom of the article it states:
> Wendy MacNaughton is a graphic journalist based in San Francisco.
> Meanwhile: Wendy MacNaughton’s illustrated column about the big implications of seemingly small things.
So, the illustration and the words together are kind of the point (and they don't look like a 6 year old drew them, come on). There's even an interview with her here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/18/reader-center/business-se...
In any case, newspapers have always had comics. I don't really see how this is all that different.