The business was a media organization and it seemed to me like reporters were the worst culprits.
The company provided styrofoam cups which were consumed at a enormous rate, and this was deemed to be a better solution than trying to get journalists to rinse their cups.
There was one dedicated employee whose main job was to gather the cups and put them in the dishwasher and after they are cleaned, put them back in the cabinet. Dishwasher ran constantly and that employee kept kitchenette neat in between of cup handling. I think there were even two dishwashers so one can be loaded while the other is working.
The system was pretty much perfect. If people forgot to bring their cups back to kitchenette they were gathered by the cleaners at the end of the day from employees desks.
I'm part of an environmental group at my workplace, and one of our recent pilots was to get rid of single-use paper cups. It was crazy: despite ample clean ceramic cups being available --and indeed stacked on top of the coffee machine!-- many people defaulted to paper cups, sometimes to the tune of having 5-10 used paper cups on their desk at the end of a day.
Anyway, one of the issues that the pilot uncovered was that no-one was loading or unloading the dishwasher: it transpired that everyone thought it was someone else's job. This led to piles of dirty cups and a shortage of clean cups, despite each kitchen area having a dedicated commercial-grade dishwasher.
The long-term solution is education - so that people understand that we must all take responsibility for the cleaning together, and to train people how to use the dishwashers. The short-term solution is for each kitchen area to have a couple of colleagues who keep an eye on things.
I'm one of them for my floor, and I unexpectedly find it strangely therapeutic to do the dish-washing :)
I'm always delighted when I'm doing non-development things at work:
"Hey, I'm a part time dishwasher with developer salary!"
If any workplace ever implements this - leave.
I'm not paying my engineers $200k a year to load a dishwasher for even a minute. We have cleaners who do it as part of their rotation, anything else and you're running a clown show.
To me, the bigger WTF is having to train people to use a dishwasher--hopefully that is something most adults can be expected to know how to do already.
You'd think, but in this case it is surprisingly unintuitive. The machine is a small high-throughput commercial grade item (takes just a few minutes per wash) which has little in common with home dishwashers. Further, its touchscreen interface is honestly really confusing. It took me a few goes and several wrong turns before I got it right, and this was with motivation.
Serenity is priceless for coders.
This is pricelessly succint. If there is one guiding principal for creating office space, this should be it.
> I'm not paying my engineers $200k a year to load a dishwasher for even a minute. We have cleaners who do it as part of their rotation, anything else and you're running a clown show.
I see your point, but it's means to an end. Our immediate goal, as a group of motivated employees, is to remove the paper cups. This is being done with the grudging acceptance of the team who actually run the building, who would probably be much happier if we stopped trying to change things, making their lives more complicated. Thus, while we can make the change we desire quickly and relatively easily, we must also handle the downsides of the change, to be successful - otherwise, it would be reversed. Long-term, having a dedicated cleaner do this would be optimal... but that's a change that would take far longer to enact.
Some people still use the provided cups instead of their own, but it helps.
You're not the only one!
I don't think the environmental impact is that big if they use paper / cardboard cups instead. Those are properly reusable at least.
It is almost as bad as the somewhat inexplicable growth in bottled water in places where tap water is perfectly acceptable. In fact many of the branded bottles of water are not spring water but bottled tap water.
I find people buying $200 sneakers that offer no significant performance improvement over much cheaper alternatives to be 'inexplicable.' I find people buying $1000 phones when a $200 phone would perform literally 100% of a purchaser's tasks to 100% acceptability, to be 'inexplicable'. I even find people buying new cars 'inexplicable' given their hyper-depreciation - meaning a lightly used car is generally a vastly better value.
Of course I put 'inexplicable' in single quotes because these things are all completely explicable. Personal choice is a right of every person in a free society, and people have different views and values. And my examples understate the relevance of this as this choice is far more significant, and frequently personal, when it comes to what people consume than whatever stuff people buy for image crafting.
But we don't. Rather, we make the price of engaging in that activity extremely high. What would be closest to what you are advocating would be something like summary execution for all cases of homicide and rape, and no civilized country does that.
While I know that laptop and desktop systems have reached the point where pretty much anything will serve -- my laptop is over five years old and works for what I need -- I haven't found that phones have topped out yet. There is a massive array of features, including durability and battery life, where there is at least some potential to get more by paying more, and where I might actually use that.
I could possibly learn more by reading reviews and trying to read in between the lines, but as somebody who tries to upgrade rarely, I was content to pay more and hope that I'm actually getting what I need. And then try not to do it again for several years.
I fully admit to ignorance -- and that's your answer. I don't work with many cell phones; mostly, just mine. So you might well be able to recommend me an acceptable $200 substitute. But I bet somebody here would disagree, and I wouldn't know who to believe.
That's my experience. I can't tell you if it generalizes. (I can say that I waited until I got it for half price, which removes some of the sting.)
As a kid, here in the UK, most schools, public buildings and towns (in the street) had drinking fountains. Most town centres, shopping areas, tourist spots etc had them. Quite often they had a way to fill a bottle too. In the eighties they died out, and you'll rarely to never see one today. Why? They certainly weren't unsafe.
Bottled water producers seem to have managed to put people off our overwhelmingly safe tap water and drinking fountains. Now tap is seen as second rate somehow. Put in a vending machine instead, etc. Drinking fountains in schools and streets are long gone.
So now everyone can buy a Coke or bottled water, complete with single use plastic, and we mistakenly call that progress. The same people seem fine using tap water for tea, ice, juice etc.
Yet another bit of progress that baffles me. :)
I remember in the 80’s when travelling to Europe, whether you could drink the tap water was always a question to ask at the start of the holiday. 30 years later, we are now questioning our own tap water even though the rest of the EU and America have caught up, with water quality that is on par with anything that could be purchased in a bottle.
Tap water and bottled water in Utrecht are pumped from EXACTLY the same source. :)
Bottled water was found to contain microplastics.
people don’t spend their money and carry huge loads of water bottles if they can have the equivalent for « free » at home. If they do it’s because the tap water infrastructure (as a whole, up to the kitchen’s tap) alter the taste and quality of the water badly enough, even in the cases where the original source is of comparable quality.
It's marketing that drives the preference. That's why most chronic bottled water drinkers I know surround their life with other bullshit irrelevant products. It's the same mechanics
$25'000 is more than you need in several lifetimes.
But then again, tab water here is excellent and also cool. So I don't see a reason why I should transport bottled water. It is much more convenient and cheaper.
The standard kirkland bottled water you see in the US in the standard 80 unit packs would run you $195,000 for that.
Municipal water would be about $1,500 for that + $150 filter.
It's a 99.2% cheaper option. Oh right and the 1.6 million water bottles you'd not have produced, right.
Many people drinking bottled water aren't drinking the cheapest in the supermarket - the recycling bin outside my flat is regularly filled with 1.5l evian bottles - they're £1 each in the local shop. At one bottle a day, that's ~35 person-years. Not common, but not insane.
However, my office has 17 people on my floor. If everyone here drank one bottle of it a day, we'd hit it in 2 years.
Even given expensive name brand water, a $50 filter cartridge only lasts for six months. That's $3150 for the same period. $50 replacing $25,000 is not grounded in reality.
Are you saying that 5 minute task every few years is more work then manually lugging 10,000 gallons of water through say, 10,000 separate containers, carrying each one, opening them manually each time, tipping and pouring them, then discarding them? (that's the weight of about 25 cars)
Not to be rude but I don't believe you.
Every filtration system I have owned needs to have the cartridges replaced every six months. What system has multi-year cartridges?
As it stands, I have trouble to descale the washing machine every six months.
I know that the simple table based filters (a can with a filter to filter 1 liter of water) are often not exchanged frequently enough.
Why introduce that risk unnecessarily?
That said, I think plastic can be OK if it is trashed adequately. I don't think my plastic bottles end up in the oceans.
What other-worldly solution do you think the bottling companies are using?
That's not it. People don't drink tap water because they don't believe it's safe.
People who don't drink tap water usually have no trouble drinking it after it's boiled.
And non carbonated bottled water tastes just like tap water and you couldn't tell the two apart if there were from taps and brands you are not familiar with.
I think there are even pretty big differences, say, between the tap water in Santa Clara and the tap water in Milpitas, for example.
I mean, If your argument is that bottled water is wasteful, I'm not disagreeing, but I am saying that if you drink mostly water, even pretty small differences in the mineral content make detectible differences in taste.
absolutely. in the european cities where i lived, you could sometimes tell to which aquifer a household is connected. Depending on the neighborhood some need to clean their bathroom appliances from chalk twice as often.
That isn't to say that there's no taste difference, but that preferring a specific brand of bottled water is likely to be much more about the subconscious effect of marketing than something a priori more enjoyable about the mineral content of a specific brand.
But tastes vary so much that you couldn't tell random tap from random bottled.
Point being that while some places do have awful tap water, a lot of people just drink bottled or filtered water because they see people drink bottled or filtered water and copy that without even stopping to consider if their tap water is good enough or not.
To be honest, the argument for bottled water (I incorrectly thought) was more due to the convenience factor rather the taste. Clearly there are other points to consider.
https://www.ecowatch.com/bottled-water-sources-tap-253751064...
You might also have to modify the chemical makeup of the tap water itself.
Personally, I drink tap, but that's mostly because someone won't hook up the fridge (and nobody else in the family likes ice, for some reason.)
Seems like it can be applied to cups as well.
Guess it depends on the business.
Large companies I've worked at with several hundred people have multiple dish washers per floor, cleaners going round kitchens on the floor making sure cups/dishes are in the dishwashers, running regular wash cycles and emptying.
Small offices with a handful of people normally have people put cups in the dishwasher at the end of the day and turn it on when leaving.
I guess maybe it's the medium sized companies that have an issue? To many people for a end of day cycle to work, not enough people to justify multiple dishwashers/full time cleaner to keep things in order.
However like with litter and graffiti in the streets, if people let even a small amount of cups & plates build up - then everyone seems to think it's time to dump their stuff in the sink too.
I don't know how bigger companies handle the issue, but the plan for scaling up seems obvious: have one person responsible for the dishwashers of each floor (or whatever division seems reasonable).
My dream home will have 2 dishwashers for that reason.
Rack 1: in the dishwasher being washed
Rack 2: in the cabinet of clean dishes
Rack 3: set out to be filled with dirty dishes
Cheaper than an extra dishwasher!
I'm smiling, but I'm also serious. I could go for such a system.
A reusable glasscup breaks even in terms of energy vs a styrofoam at ~50 re uses. That doesn't price in the lifetime cost of disposing of the styrofoam, and glass is pretty much inert.
[0] https://terngoods.com/blogs/learn/cups-single-use-disposable...
Doing this should be so expensive that the option wouldn't be considered. Or then they do it anyway and pay huge taxes for it, paying their share of the recycling / cleaning up.
You have to include all the steps of how it got from tree to your hand and your hand back into the Earth. There's still plenty of pollution in that process even if the object itself isn't part of it.
The whole process, as in the whole entire complete every step of the way process has to be looked at
Like it's better from reusable cups? Basically will likely be ceramic, plastic, and metal from China, hauled across the ocean in some hugely polluting ship. No thanks.
I have a zojirushi mug that lasts about 2-3 years. I use it daily and keep it in my bag. It's been in 8 countries this year alone. It probably saves about 600 or so cups so even if it is 10 times more energy to build the canister I have it's still 98% less aggregate energy.
A reduction of 2 orders of magnitude is quite substantial.
The gains here from simply using a reusable cup are equivalent to say, getting a car that got 3000 mpg but had some minor inconvenience such as needing 3 minutes to warm up when you turned it on.
Outside those conditions, “disposable” coffee cups of all types lead to long-term pollution.
The PE lined cups can be recycled, the UK currently has capacity to recycle all the 2.5 billion cups we use annually.
Firstly, they require quite a lot of water and energy to produce and bleach, especially compared to a styrofoam cup.
Secondly, they are still wasteful. Using a glass cup costs less after about 20 uses.
Thirdly, biodegradable is being flung around as a solution, but it only is if you actually dispose of the waste correctly. if it goes to landfill, chances are it won't biodegrade in any reasonable timeframe. Also, biodegradable materials degrade usually into CO2, which is what we're trying to prevent from escaping in the first case.
Is it really that bad? As in, so bad it justifies the amount of waste the alternatives produce? I'm sure it's not the worst thing you deal with on a daily basis i.e. door handles are pretty gross.
Indeed they are. I am probably weird, but when I walk into our building I have a paper towel in my hand to grab the door handle. In fact there are two door handles, one from the parking lot and one into the building, so I use one side of the paper towel first, then fold it in half with a clean side on the outside and use that for the building door handle.
Similarly at the cafeteria. I use a "clean hand, dirty hand" system there. My right hand gets dirty handling shared serving utensils, while my left hand stays clean handling fresh plates and such. And then before I eat I find a way to inconspicuously wash my dirty hand. Especially when I've gone to the salad bar and gotten icky sticky salad dressing on my dirty hand. Now that is gross.
Weird? For sure. But at the age of 67 my immune system is probably not as good as it was when I was 20-something.
It's been working so far. I seem to be one of the few people in the office who hasn't been out with a bad cold this year.
Yes, those paper towels are pure waste. I toss them in the compost bin, and I'm grateful to have used them.
Edit: if any of the multiple downvoters could mention what they objected to here, I would be genuinely grateful for the feedback so I can do a better job with my comments. Or if it's something I should have figured out on my own, I will do my best to sort it out. :-) Thanks!
You make your immune system weaker by avoid germs. This system need constant update and training on germs and new germs. I don't really think the immune system get weaker by aging.Also, your skin, provided that you didn't cut yourself, will protect you from almost anything.
Their is a lot more things you should worried about like sick people who still go to work. Door handle will never make you sick...
Probably because your immune system is good?
If he successfully avoids touching common objects and surfaces this is probably the cause that he didn't caught the cold because that's exactly how you get it.
Appeal to the building owners / maintainers for unplated, unpolished brass handles. The copper in brass (or other alloys of copper) is antimicrobial. Obviously the effect isn't immediate, clinical trials suggest it is immpresively high.
"Timmy to George: That's like putting your whole mouth right in the dip! From now on, when you take a chip - just take one dip and end it!"
Keyboards.
Also, not everything ends up in the landfill but ends up polluting our oceans instead. Unlike paper which will eventually decompose in the ocean, styrofoam will just pile up.
According to wikipedia, styrofoam doesn't essentially last forever.
Also, what's with the downvotes for asking a question? This place really seems to be going the way of reddit. Too bad... was a nice place to discuss the facts for a while. Apologies for making anyone question dogma.
That behavior doesn't scale and is unsustainable.
And that mentality leads to ever increasing pollution.
At some point, we're going to want to dig up the resources in a landfill. They're much more concentrated than in the natural environment.
The dogma is thinking landfills are one-way collection systems which grow without bound. As long as they're not leaking into the environment, they seem like perfectly reasonable ways of storing things we do not currently have a use for.
Styrofoam for single-use products has been banned in NYC already.
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33334994
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2014/aug/27...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polystyrene
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-12299-2
The EU has decided to ban throwaway polystyrene foam but I don't know if this counts for much as I don't know how much science was taken into account. There will be a comprehensive risk assessment by the EPA: https://www.epa.gov/assessing-and-managing-chemicals-under-t....
My worry is when packaging EPS breaks down into tiny particles that could be inhaled. This cannot be great.