Disposable Packaging

We humans have been good at labeling things "disposable" lately. Let's say a box of plastic forks is labelled disposable. Says who? Those forks are going to be in the ground in their same shape until long after I'm dead. And plasticware isn't the worst of it. Packaging is the worst.

Packages are supposed to protect, and maybe hint at the quality of what is inside. But packaging should be all about what is inside. When I look at how things are wrapped at Starbucks, I begin to wonder what the deal is: 5 grams of plastic to sell 2 grams of chocolate? How is it possible that I'm so often sold by a big bow? A straight-lined, robin's egg blue wrapping paper? Often, we're being sold packaging. But why buy packaging for its own sake?

God knows how to make disposable things. Look at a banana. That wrapping is completely disposable. You throw it in the trash can at 10 am, and you can smell it decomposing by 3 pm, and you can really smell it decomposing by 10 am the next day. When a package tells us something is disposable, they're commanding us to dump something in the trash can after we use it, and never think about it again. It's "worry-free," "time-saving," "healthy."  I don't want to buy into that idea. I want to appreciate the matter around me: I want to wash it and use it again; or if I need to save time and worry, perhaps not have it in the first place.