Dear Sarah,

I looked into “green” flatware for our Earth Day event, but didn’t really find anything that was workable for me.

Here are the issues I ran into:

· “compostable” flatware doesn’t decompose in a home compost bin. It takes a commercial one with very high heat.

· Most folks don’t realize it’s compostable, so they throw this stuff in the recyclables where it degrades the quality of the plastic because it’s not recyclable.

· Our green waste people in Ventura, last I checked, don’t compost these utensils. You have to have a special deal with your compost people to make sure they will take these things. So In Ventura, they’re only good for the landfill.

· Seems to me that with the growing, processing, packaging, shipping, storing, these things have a pretty high carbon foot print.

Here’s what I’ve come up with, and I don’t mind hearing other ideas. There’s no way to throw away your flatware and still be green. What if we had no disposable forks and spoons, what would people do? They might:

-Eat finger food like sandwiches, ice-cream cones, french fries, chips, pickles, pizza, tacos, etc, etc,

- Bring chopsticks, or personal silver.

- Use food like chips, pretzels, crackers for dipping.

-Have a place to wash silverware, or just throw it in a bucket for cleaning later.

My suggestion is to stay away from throw-away flatware. Even those disposable chopsticks are damaging as heck to the planet, and you don’t get greener than sticks of wood. It’s our head that needs to change, not our technology.

Kind Regards,

-Rachel

-----Original Message-----
From: scpg-bounces@arashi.com [mailto:scpg-bounces@arashi.com] On Behalf Of Sarah Garney
Sent: Friday, May 11, 2007 6:09 PM
To: scpg@arashi.com
Subject: Re: [Scpg] Looking for a source for compostable plates and forks

Hey thanks to everyone who wrote, I got a lot of great responses

Here’s what folks said:

www.nativefoods.com

Sinless Buying Compostable plates,
cutlery from sugarcane plastic.
http://www.sinlessbuying.com/tep/catalog/catalog/default.php?manufacturers_i
d=10

Nat-UR Store makes compostable corn-based plastic dinnerware and cutlery:
http://w5inter2.hivelocity.net/biocorp/cart/showall.asp

Earthshell's compostable plates, cups, cutlery are in Smart & Final stores.

And .....
Call Allan Haskell at (323) 663-7747.  His website is <www.eco-now.net <http://www.eco-now.net>  > .  
His e-mail address is <allan@eco-now.net> <mailto:allan@eco-now.net>    
His compostable plates and utensiles distribution company is called Cater Green.

Thanks again!
Sarah