A mountain of styrofoam
Today at the newfangled behemoth called Children's Hospital in Lawrenceville is Employee Appreciation Day, which means free food. Here's what health care professionials are supposed to eat: macaroni salad or cucumber salad, half a corn on the cob, veggie burger / hamburger / hot dog or barbeque chicken and lastly a cookie or a brownie, with a score of soft drinks to choose from. It's also worth mentioning that besides an absence of fruit and practical absence of vegetables on offer, a large number of doctors here were not born in the U.S. We have stolen many sharp people from Eastern Europe, East Asia, South Asia, the Middle East and everywhere else. A very American lunch.
The operation was run pretty smoothly and it's all you can eat. So here's the plastic and styrofoam that allowed this to happen: 1 styrofoam tray, 1 plastic-wrapped set of plastic silverware, 1 styrofoam dish for "salad," 1 styrofoam plate for burger/dog/chicken, 1 styrofoam plate for desert (the cookies are individually wrapped) and 1 styrofoam cup with plastic lid and plastic straw. Not only employees but regular cafeteria customers are taking part in this. And guess what? I used my tray only to get my food from the cafeteria to my desk and I didn't even use the spoon or knife.
It's already the case that hospitals, for the purpose of sanitation, throw away a great deal of stuff. But no amount of greening to the new building, such as recycled tiles on a small portion of the building and motion-sensing lights in many rooms, can make up for this kind of waste. We could have used plastic trays - are people going to steal them? We all work here.
Craziness.
The operation was run pretty smoothly and it's all you can eat. So here's the plastic and styrofoam that allowed this to happen: 1 styrofoam tray, 1 plastic-wrapped set of plastic silverware, 1 styrofoam dish for "salad," 1 styrofoam plate for burger/dog/chicken, 1 styrofoam plate for desert (the cookies are individually wrapped) and 1 styrofoam cup with plastic lid and plastic straw. Not only employees but regular cafeteria customers are taking part in this. And guess what? I used my tray only to get my food from the cafeteria to my desk and I didn't even use the spoon or knife.
It's already the case that hospitals, for the purpose of sanitation, throw away a great deal of stuff. But no amount of greening to the new building, such as recycled tiles on a small portion of the building and motion-sensing lights in many rooms, can make up for this kind of waste. We could have used plastic trays - are people going to steal them? We all work here.
Craziness.