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seszett

Why wouldn't they just switch to paper plates instead?

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And wooden single-use cutlery is pretty common already today.

Really? I've never seen it in the US, except in the form of wooden coffee stirrers.

I have seen bamboo plates and cutlery, though it isn't common.

Yes. My local cafe has metal spoons for my yoghurt if I'm eating in, but wooden if I'm taking out.

It's not unusual in the UK.

It's not common. But a few cafes around me are wooden utensil only. Metal and paper straws I've also seen an uptick in.

Chinese or most East Asian food restaurants have wooden single-use chopsticks

You see them some in the US, there are also some that are that are made from corn. They feel/flex like plastic but are biodegradable.

The ones that look and feel like plastic are essentially plastic. The conditions it takes to get them to break down don't happen in a landfill.

You don't want things to break down in a landfill. They do decompose in industrial composting facilities, though, which are becoming more accessible (we just signed up for a service that costs $5/week for a decent-sized bin).

Wood doesn't break down under landfill conditions either, at least not on human time scales.

But wooden objects do biodegrade within human time scales if just left in a meadow. The same is true of polylactic acid objects. Neither wooden nor PLA objects break down in a home composting system like orange peels do, but both biodegrade much faster than e.g. polystyrene.

They usually come with this warning that they are only biodegradable on specialized facility.

I try to use paper whenever possible for environmental reasons, and it's really only usable for dry foods. Some paper has a waxy coating that helps, but it's quite a bit more expensive and if you are doing any sort of cutting/poking the food, you still don't get a lot of time before you break through.

So tl;dr: paper is a worse user experience. Worth it IMHO but many people will certainly not agree.

That waxy coating is very likely just plastic. Wax coating of paper products has dropped out in favor of plastic and that makes those paper products unrecyclable.

Wax-coated paper is also unrecyclable. We are talking about biodegradable here, not recyclable.

Disposable plates and paper boxes covered in grease and food bits or soggy with liquid also shouldn’t be tossed in the recycle bin (except in places which explicitly accept them), with or without a coating.

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