I’m all about the little things. They’re just too easy to do. And here’s one that I insist upon: I always ask what comes with my plate. I used to just ask for everything on the side. Let’s say my burger comes with onions. I’d just discard the onions. The problem with this is that it wastes some onion. I may not want them, but certainly someone else will. It might be a bit of a hassle, but I alway ask the waitress what comes on my plate, and tell her what not to bring me. As is, restaurants produce a lot of organic waste. This is my way to help cut down on that.
I just had an idea. What about creating a coalition of restaurants that will “honor your cup”—you bring in your favorite cup (or maybe tupperware, for take out), and that restaurant will agree to serve you in that.
The biggest problem I can think of is health code. I could see this being a violation.
Maybe restaurants could rent out tupperware—you can choose normal take out boxes, or pay a deposit and take home some tupperware that has the restaurant’s name written on it. If you keep the tupperware, they get the deposit. Otherwise, you can bring it back in the next time you go to the restaurant and get a credit for your meal that is the same cost as the deposit.
Or maybe it could be centralized, restaurants could check out tupperware and receive credits for returning them, that way you could take home tupperware from restaurant a and return it to restaurant b, who could trade it back to the central tupperware check to get their deposit back. There’d have to be some loss in the system, though.
Last night, after the preview of MacHomer, a friend and I walked to Kosmos for a late dinner. Operating on the promise I received earlier in the day on free lunch today, I used the last of the money in my wallet to make my stomach very happy—I purchased a Kosmos gyro, with fries and a drink. Those Kosmos fries, man. They deserve all the acclaim they get.
Anyway, the girl behind the counter hands me a cup. A styrofoam cup. First disappointment of the night. Then I go to fill up my cup. Pepsi. Second disappointment. No lemons to make my Pepsi palatable. Third disappointment. I did enjoy my gyro.
And then I realized something. I’ve often been disappointed with local business that use styrofoam. But I never really did anything about it. But in the past two days I’d been to three restaurants that used styrofoam cups—Kosmos, Jammin’ Java, and Baba Boudan’s. It’s weird, because all three places are visited largely by what I would consider the hippie crowd.
It’s not just styrofoam, though. I hate unnecessary receipts. A lot of places ask you if you want one, but the library doesn’t. And what about all of those rubber bands they hand out? It’s nice that Arsaga’s gives you free water, but usually its only a plastic cup. I like glass cups there, too, because I usually don’t have a water to go. The WAC was asking us to re-use our programs, citing how it is a green activity (although one that probably also saves them money), but at the preview of MacHomer, they were handing out ‘gift bags’ filled with slips of paper. They were in plastic bags. They could have just as easily been in paper envelopes that will biodegrade.
I think that we Fayettevillians should take some action on this. If you don’t know what it is, you should definitely learn up on the
dollar vote, as that’s an important concept. Basically, if you think a business sucks but it’s somehow still in operation, it’s because other people don’t, and they vote for the business with their dollar. Voting against a business is effectively a boycott.
Now I’m not suggesting that Fayetteville should boycott all of our favorite locally-owned places (what an awful idea). But if enough consumers were to ask en masse for change, it’d probably be a lot more effective than a few customers complaining. And I’ll admit that I haven’t talked to a single business owner about this, because I don’t know how much good only my comment will do. Lets all band together for this. Would anybody else be willing to help me organize this group?
