Tales from the drive-thru

By Christopher Forestieri

Like many working people, I once fell into the routine of getting up, hurrying to work and hitting a drive-thru at lunch time. The stomachaches, long waits and the trash in my car became commonplace.

However, leafing through my thinning wallet one day, I stopped to consider the facts.

First, fast-food is extremely wasteful. You’re buying a lot more than grease and potatoes when you order up French-fries.

They are packaged in plastic, frozen, boxed, shipped, unpackaged, fried, repackaged in cardboard and, again, repackaged in any number of bags which end up either in your local landfill or on the side of your local highway. And that’s just the fries!

The forests in Southern North America Supply 60 percent of U.S. paper, a large part of which is used by major fast food chains. According to Lauren Barnett, Dogwood Alliance Media Outreach coordinator, “Southern forests are (among) the most bio-diverse forests in the world. These forests contain high concentrations of rare and endangered species.”

Mongaby.com notes that “Americans use 15 billion disposable hot beverage cups every year, with projections reaching 23 billion by 2010.”

This number can be greatly reduced by consumers using their own reusable cups and containers. In fact, many coffee shops offer discounts to patrons who bring in “travel” mugs. If your local coffee shop doesn’t, ask.

But what if you’re not worried about wasting paper, what about wasting money? Let’s say I eat fast-food five days a week. The average fast food meal costs between $3-$10: at $6.50 per meal, that’s $32.50 a week.

Add in a coffee and muffin each morning, at say $3.50, that’s $17.50. Already I’m at $50 and that’s just for lunch and coffee. If I want to go out to dinner a couple nights or buy a snack now and then, you can imagine how the cost rises.

I went to the store with my girlfriend and we bought what the two of us needed for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks for seven days. The total came to about $55 each.

For what I spent on lunch and coffee, I was able to feed myself good food for a whole week with much less waste.

Photos by Caw Recycles and the BBC