by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
BYO, as in Bring Your Own, is well known and becoming established by now as far as grocery bags are concerned, and BYOC started in Japan as “Bring your own Chopsticks” because of the environmental impact all those disposable chopsticks, whether made from wood or plastic have.
I would like to widen its remit, so to speak, to “Bring your own Cutlery”, bring your own KFS-set.
Being Gypsy having my own knife, spoon, etc., has always been common and it is rooted in our cleanliness taboo but it is, in my opinion, a great idea for us all.
While I, as a Gypsy, have my own cutlery set that travels with me on my person, for general purpose use, theoretically, even for use in eateries, carrying a proper KFS-set for when one gets a takeout meal on the go or for the office lunch is the green thing to do.
I hate to estimate how many plastic knives, forks, spoons, sporks and chopsticks are daily thrown away into the trash in Greater London alone, let alone in the country or the world. The mind would boggle, of that I am sure.
And where do all those plastic eating utensils go? You guessed it! To the good ol' landfill, where they will take at least five centuries to break down into every finer and smaller bits of plastic, contaminating the soil.
Even if the plastic from which they are made is recyclable it is not being reclaimed and recycled as, due to the fact of them being in mixed rubbish, they are not collected for recycling.
So, the best answer, in my view, if to go the BYO route and bring your own KFS-set. It is not difficult to do, regardless of what some may think. Every soldier does so.
Having, some while ago, lost the KFS-set of my childhood and youth, and also my military one,. I have assembled a new one for myself from airline cutlery (from the days when they still had real steel cutlery on planes) and made a leather pouch for it so I can carry the set in an inside pocket oif a jacket or other such place.
How many people daily have a takeout lunch at their office or during their office lunch time in a park or such and each and every time, unless they are conscientious and have retained a set of those plastic utensils for future use, a new set of eating tools comes along that ends up in the trash can? What a waste!
But we can all do our bit to end such a waste by refusing plastic at the shop and by bringing and using our own utensils.
I Japan and even China it is now commonplace for people to have their own set of chopsticks on them and no one thinks anything of it. We could, nay should, make this practice so common of bringing our own eating tools that asking for plastic would be the exception and even frowned upon. A little like asking for a plastic carrier has become in some places.
Having said about the plastic carrier, and I am not digressing for a second, it is sad to see that in many places in the British Isles in stores they still just stuff the things into a bag without asking and look aghast when you say, erm, sorry, but I have my own bags.
However, we must phase out the use of plastic for both cutlery and bags and also disposable wooden chopsticks.
Let's hear it for BYO cutlery...
© 2011
