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At most places Melissa Valliant goes when dining out, she carries in her backpack a set of reusable flatware — prepared to refuse the disposable utensils she says are part of the plastic pollution crisis that's inextricably linked with the climate crisis.
Some reports estimate that potentially between 36 billion and 40 billion plastic utensils are used every year just in the United States, which is more than 100 million per day, Valliant said.
You might think recycling plastic flatware may offset the harms of using it. But as of 2018, only 9% of all the plastic the world has ever produced — around 9 billion metric tons or nearly 10 billion US tons — had been recycled, according to a report by the United Nations Environment Programme. What isn't recycled or thrown away is burned or littered, experts said. Burning plastic utensils releases carbon dioxide into the environment, Dr. Jillian Goldfarb said, and an incinerator that isn't at peak performance can release particulate matter and carbon monoxide.
To limit your use of plastic flatware, you could switch to compostable, bamboo or metal options, all of which generally require or produce significantly less energy, water, waste or emissions, Goldfarb said. Producing a pound of bamboo forks, for example, expends 0.46 kilowatts per hour, whereas making a pound of plastic forks expends 11 kilowatts per hour, according to Goldfarb. (Manufacturing metal utensils, however, does require more water than plastic utensils.)
But you don't have to buy a reusable set from a trendy environmental store — you can just use what you already have, Valliant
said.
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