Comments on: Green Dining

By: Kathy

Kathy — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 04:20:34 +0000

I love the idea of bringing a reusable container to the restaurant with you! I already do many of the ideas mentioned, but that one never occurred to me. I have hated taking home leftovers in those massive styrofoam boxes. Since my son has been in 1st grade, I have always packed his, and his 2 brothers’, lunches in reusable containers (and cloth napkins). He is in 11th grade now, packs his own lunch and still does this! Unfortunately, it hasn’t caught on more at his school. Does anyone have ideas on how to get the high school cafeteria to stop using so much styrofoam for everything they serve?!?!?

By: Barbara

Barbara — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 00:50:03 +0000

We are trying as a household to find as many ways as we can to “go green” We use stainless water bottles,I am eating Vegan and my husband eats Vegetarian, we use reusable grocery bags, keep paper bags and reuse them too. We eat as local as we are able too at this time and hope to manage to do more as we learn. We use wax paper to wrap food and buy soups etc. in glass jars rather than take away containers. We try to combine car trips to limit the number and generally are aiming towards consuming less. We “lobby” for natural gardening practices in our condo neighbourhood and this year for Christmas I gave all our skeptical children gifts of stainless drinking bottles and reusable shopping bags and tea tree oil for cleaning, reusable cloths to replace paper towels and organic granola. They loved them!! I am looking for more ways to go green and loving the challenge!

By: Janet

Janet — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 19:38:53 +0000

I reused the plastic mulch bags by burying them along with tons of mulch to kill the weeds. It acts as a second barrier and nothing gets thru! Good option if you can’t handle shoveling all that bulk mulch.

By: Jennifer

Jennifer — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 03:08:10 +0000

After reading through 24 posted comments, I’d like to share my additional and very doable idea of taking home any paper and plastic products (i.e.cutlery) that I end up with most times when dining out. Usually this is just the paper napkin(s), which I cut up into smaller sections once back home and set into a little basket affixed to the inside of the kitchen sink door. Since many places I frequent for eating out don’t use cloth napkins, I accumulate a respectable pile that I can use instead of buying paper towels for mopping up messes, wiping out pans, sopping up oily spots before running through with the dish rag, etc.. I haven’t purchased paper towels in years! For drying the hands I have a terry cloth towel handy. Other paper products (plates, cups) that come my way just go into the cardboard recycle box in my garage. The plastic items go into plastic recycling, which my community thankfully does. If I know in advance that a dining business uses only paper and plastic, I bring my own ceramic mug, cutlery (bamboo) and plate (enameled tin). What fun to hear the remarks of salespersons and other customers looking on!

By: andrajeanne

andrajeanne — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 16:45:31 +0000

It’s hard to dine out “green” in my area, my local restaurants have just not caught on yet. So I came up with a great fix. With a group of friends you take turns hosting a “green” dinner party. Once a week or once a month, the host will have everyone over and prepare a wonderful dinner with locally or self grown organic food. Each meal is a surprise to the guests and gets everyone talking and finding out new healthy recipes and new places to get certain ingredients. It also gets the creativity going for the next host. It’s a lot of fun and a great way to spend an evening “dining out” with friends that uses local resources, and produces hardly any waste.

By: veronica

veronica — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 19:47:32 +0000

Don’t Dine out!!!! More meals should be based around the family dinner table. We are living in a world that is so wasteful that we have forgotten to appreciate the air we breathe & to live the healthy lives that we were meant to live. I love to plant seeds and watch them grow into beautiful plants that I can benefit from the spring to winter. Perserving is a way to keep all the much needed trash out of our landfills. Jars are made to last lifetimes. I know many family’s do not have the resources to plant crops in the suburbs but we can buy locally and eat organic to save the farmers in this fast paced world.

By: Janet

Janet — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 20:52:07 +0000

I have stopped buying those plastic water bottles for use when I work out. Think about the $ you’ll save at the grocery store in addition to all those plastic bottles – where do they end up? I used to take comfort in the fact that they were all recycled, but I wonder sometimes…I purchased a stainless steel water bottle from greenfeet.com. Strange name for a website, but environmentally conscious website.

By: Janet

Janet — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 20:47:03 +0000

While vacationing in Kennebunkport, Maine, I went to a food store that actually provided free sturdy cloth bags to hold your wine bottles. It had individual compartments. Now in PA and other states, liquor is not sold in food stores but this type of cloth bag is very useful when shopping, plus it eliminates both paper and plastic bags which the stores will use to protect the bottles. I’ll have to take a look and see if I can still read the manufacturer and I’ll post that info in case anyone is interested in where they can buy these.

By: Jan Spahn

Jan Spahn — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 03:36:49 +0000

I have just started taking a reusable container with me when I go out to dinner. I just don’t want to use Styrofoam containers that most places give you for take home! So far, this has been met with a pleasant response from the waiter/waitress!!!

By: Lynne Goodrich

Lynne Goodrich — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 03:33:52 +0000

It is really pretty easy to set up composting of food waste and paper goods at group events such as school parties or community group potlucks.
In Seattle we can put compostables in our home yard waste containers. At events outside of home, I put bio-bags in garbage cans for compostables and have folks take a bag home with them. And, I have a box just for disposable forks – after the event I take them home and put them through the dishwasher – I have now used the same set of 100 plus forks for six different events. Folks are usually very receptive and also surprised that there is very little cost or time involved to compost for a party or potluck.