Bon Appetit wants its readers to enjoy not only fashionable victuals but fashionable virtues as well. “We’re Going Plastic-Free This Weekend — And We Want You To Too,” the foodie mag proclaimed recently.
Soon the editors halved what they were demanding of their readers, though they did add a Lenten overtone to the ask: “We’re Giving Up Plastic For a Day — And We Want You To Too.”
It’s almost enough to make one think last year’s crusade against the humble plastic straw was just a trial run for progressive demands yet to come. But that’s not fair of me, suspecting environmental teetotalers of having ambitions of achieving some eco-Volstead regime.
Oh, I forgot to include the subheadline to the story: “First came straws. Now comes … everything else.”
What does that mean in practice?
Let’s say you’re going to order up some takeout. You might want to think pizza, which reliably comes in good old biodegradable cardboard. Or you might choose Chinese, as long as the food comes to go in old-school, “oyster pail” cartons. That is, as long as you have made sure the takeout-box card stock isn’t plastic-coated.
Of course, both those choices are wasteful and backward. What were you thinking? Happily, Bon Appetit is ready with a solution.
The magazine explains it by saying they subscribe “to the eco-minded credo, ‘sometimes, you just have to be a weirdo.'”
Hey, the magazine said it, not me.
In this case, that means bringing one’s own Tupperware to restaurants to pick up takeout. Bon Appetit advises its earnest readers to “Call ahead and ask for the meal on a plate and transfer it to the container yourself.” This is all well and good, but I do worry that Bon Appetit has failed to calculate the environmental impact of the restaurant using dish soap and hot water to wash that extra, otherwise unused plate.
To avoid unnecessary packaging, the magazine urges us to make basics from scratch: “So, you loooove yogurt, but you don’t loooove all those tubs crowding your recycling bin.” Bon Appetit recommends making yogurt at home.
The editor in charge of the anti-plastic articles emphasizes the sinfulness of yogurt, calling us to pass on it “and all those other things the supermarket only seems to sell in plastic.” And yet, it wasn’t that long ago that the same editor confessed, “I could easily go through three big tubs of Greek yogurt in a week (don’t judge).”
But I thought the whole point was to judge.
To maximize the product-to-packaging ratio, one of Bon Appetit’s contributors recommends buying “the largest size possible.” It’s best, of course, according to another contributor, if you not only buy in bulk but if you bring all your own reusable, jumbo containers.
One is then faced with a dilemma: how to get all those reused gallon jars, heavy with pearled farro, brown rice, and quinoa, a mile back to one’s apartment. You can’t put them in the back of your car, because you don’t have a car. (The environment, hello!) You could call an Uber, but it seems they utilize cars as well. No, according to another article by editor Meryl Rothstein, the thing to do is to load it all into one’s “granny cart.” She says her four-wheeled, wire cart “is profoundly uncool,” although I rather suspect she secretly believes otherwise.
She looks silly, no doubt, but who are we to criticize? If only Bon Appetit fostered that same ethos. But alas, it isn’t enough for millennials to putter along the sidewalk like good little grandmas dragging their foldable shopping carts. Good polymer prohibitionists make pests of themselves.
No. 13 of Bon Appetit’s 14 ways to kick the plastic habit is to “Hold Businesses Accountable.” That means “getting on social media” (ugh) and tweeting (ugh) at supermarkets to use less plastic. No. 14 on the list is to back up those social media threats by only shopping at “Spots That Give a Damn.”
And who would they be? My guess is they are those grocery stores that sell bulk yogurt you ladle out of a giant vat into your own supersize, reusable yogurt jar. As the magazine says, bon appetit!
Eric Felten is the James Beard Award-winning author of How’s Your Drink?
