One of my biggest goals is to reduce the amount of waste I produce by using reusable products whenever possible. Sometimes it's a pretty big no brainer, like using a reusable mug or grocery bags. The added bonus to doing the obvious is that other people have thought of it, too, so while a cashier may occasionally look askance when I hand them reusable grocery bags, it's usually old hat by now.
The problem is that the obvious only gets you so far and sometimes it involves going outside your comfort zone. It also means that you risk feeling judged by the people around you or, even worse, being yelled at for not following the rules exactly. My baby steps of using produce and then muslin at Whole Foods worked out pretty well, so I started to gain confidence and look for other options.
The solution came when I had to clean out my car this weekend. I travel a lot and I stop at Starbucks pretty often. While I've been trying to cut down on snacks there for various reasons (mainly the added expense for mediocre food), I'm not doing a great job at it, due to both habit and poor planning when it comes to meals. Since someone is usually in the car with me and wants a snack as well, a lot of the trash in my car came from Starbucks snack bags. Trying to find a reusable alternative to a paper bag seemed like a logical next step. After a little checking, I found this reusable snack bag that looked like a perfect size and also had penguins.
Today, I decided to use my reusable snack bag at Starbucks. It didn't seem like much of an issue, since it would involve the approximately the same amount of effort on the part of the barista as a paper bag would. Because of this, I expected at the most a bit of surprise.
I did not, however, expect the barista to politely but firmly inform me that she couldn't put my pumpkin loaf in my reusable snack bag because of health regulations.
I suppose it's possible that there is a regulation that prevents... I don't know, restaurants from serving customers in dishes provided by the customer. It doesn't make a lot of sense, since apparently reusable cups are allowed and most of the arguments for not using a reusable bag would apply to not using a reusable cup, like the bag not being properly cleaned (according to the health code). I can't find a copy of the relevant health code online, so I can't verify this.
It's also possible that it wasn't actually prohibited by the code, but that the barista had an incorrect understanding of this. Personally, I didn't feel like arguing, so I took the paper bag and left.
I do find this frustrating, though. It's either a case of health regulations being over the top or bad policy on the part of the company. Either way, it's convinced me to work hard at phasing out all Starbucks snacks, especially since I know for a fact that a lot of them come with a lot of packaging. And hey, I've got a nice little penguin snack bag just waiting for a purpose in life.
On another note, while researching, I did find an interesting video on ways to cut down fast food waste.
The Enviromentals (Episode 2) How to Reduce Your Fast Food Trash from Hal Brindley on Vimeo.
