My law school, perhaps because it is relatively fortunate financially, has lunches for everything --speakers from inside, speakers from outside, faculty interviews, staff interviews, new babies, high school graduations, acceptance of articles, having had a good class, setting your personal best for beer pong, catching the biggest fish at the annual faculty fishoff, divorces, pet births, speakers at other schools, going up in the rankings, almost going up in the rankings, helping students in trouble but do not know it, surpassing 10,000 steps on your Fitbit. Trust me, this is a partial list and does not count the countless efforts to feed the students or the ubiquitous plastic trays and tops that contain the food much of which is uneaten.
But the main thing we do is choke orca. Yes we eat off of, drink from, and lift our food with plastic. So let's say 40 weeks of 2 lunches a week and 25 people eating. (These are conservative estimates.) I think that adds up to 2000 plastic plates s+ 2000 plastic forks + 2000 plastic spoons + 2000 plastic cups + 2000 plastic knives in just one year. If you are counting that is 10,000 chunks of plastic each year. And since this has gone on as long as I can remember -- let's say 5 years -- we have contributed 50,000 chucks of plastic to the environment that will biodegrade sometime after Trump finishes off the earth. So, I guess in a way it does not matter.
But it could matter! What if not only the Law School but the entire University and not just the University but all Universities decided no more single use plastics. When you get down to it there are climate deniers who say so expressly and there are climate deniers who say it by their actions. Looks like academics fall in the second category or maybe they just do not give a fuck. [And please no comments that I should try to initiate change. I have.]
