• Home
• About
• Blog Roll

A Picnic Without Paper or Plastic
September 3, 2007

My birthday fell on Labor Day weekend this year and to celebrate, my family decided to gather for a nice, low-key picnic. Not all that different than our usual gatherings except for a small stipulation from the guest-of-honor: disposable plastic or paper ware not welcomed.

At first, my request elicited a small pause and a “Hmmmm….” from my family since paper plates, napkins and plastic utensils have been picnic mainstays for years. However, after a brief discussion and listing necessary items, they realized that this change is quite simple. Here’s our checklist of disposal substitutes (yes, my family is that anal):

• Picnic table clothes and napkins – we had enough old sheets, table clothes and napkins to cover the whole picnic grounds.
• Food containers – between the reusable containers, bowls and baskets, we had those covered
• Utensils – normal, everyday knives, forks and spoons work just fine.
• Plates – enough reusable plates for 10-12 at first seemed a bit daunting but a quick search turned up enough for even unexpected guests.
• Cups – these were the scarcest but we managed to find enough for all adults plus the kids had their own reusable water bottles.

To really get into the “green spirit”, most of our menu items were made with locally grown produce like salad, fresh fruit, local poultry and homemade lemonade.

Although not all of my family gives much thought to the environment, none of them seemed to mind the small change in their habits. In fact, people actually enjoyed it as we had real utensils to cut food and cloth gave the picnic a fancier feel. Plus the grandmas welcome the opportunity to use some of their kitschy picnic ware.

So in summary, my green action tally this week:

Extra Upfront Cost: None since we had all the reusable substitutes.
Extra Effort Spent: About 30 minutes to gather and find these substitutes but we would have spent the same amount of time buying disposables in the store.
Resources Spared: We had 10 people who did not use any disposable plates, cups, utensils and napkins, not to mention all the plastic packaging the stuff comes in.

After all, it was my party and I reused because I wanted to.

Copyright 2007 Organicpicks