K is for Ketchup Packet in the Compost

I'll start by admitting that I wanted to title this post "K is for Kompost". But I've long been very vocal about anyone who does not take spelling seriously, and have complained loudly and vehemently about businesses who invent their own spellings just to the have alliteration in their signs. Please note I didn't say "signage". I also have a pet-peeves about corporate buzz-words...in fact, I have a lot of pet-peeves.

I'm peeved about the whole craze of being "green" or seeming to be "green" but being oh so ridiculously wasteful anyway. I saw a prime example of this last week at what used to be my favorite sub shop. It *kills* me not to be able to go there anymore. It's for the best though, I should be making my own sandwiches anyway, and I'm rather good at it. In fact, even my sister, who doesn't eat sandwiches, will eat the ones I make. I digress. (I do it a lot. You will find that you usually get two posts for the price of one if you keep reading me...)

This particular sub shop is in Boulder County, CO and you don't get a lot greener than that. We have single stream recycling picked up at the curbside. You can drop off your tree limbs at the tree limb recycling area in town, and pick up firewood, or wood chips as you leave. We have an eco-cycle drop off site where they accept just about anything, and we have regularly scheduled "large-item drop-days" arranged by our city, in addition to the free days at the county dump. At our {insert name of large coffee chain based in Seattle here}, monster size bags of coffee grounds sit ready to be picked up on the counter because so many people compost and garden, it's just easier for them to have it ready than to have to make special arrangements. There are even signs in the parking lot of our newest mall that say, "Parking for Alternative Fuel Vehicles Only." And you'll pass a many of them as you drive our roads. But watch out for the bicycles, because many, many of us bike to work daily.

It is in this environment that you'll find the sub shop that has won awards for its handling of trash/recycling/waste. There are no less than five different bins into which you sort your trash, should you actually have any, when you're done eating. The cups for the fountain drinks are made from corn, which you compost, as are the straws, and your straw wrapper is paper, so that goes in the paper recycling. Your bottle, if you didn't have a fountain drink, is glass, so that goes in the glass recycling. They have even anther recycling bin for aluminum cans. But your bottle CAP, needs to go in the trash. They can't do much about it's footprint on the environment, so they allow you to throw it away. Friendly signs explain all this and offer examples of what goes where, with cute little cartoons and bubble letters, and rhymes. And they offer counter examples, "No ketchup packets in the compost".

But what happens to the left-over food? Most of us take that home. And that brings me to the whole point of why I'm writing this. (No, I'm not one of those environmental nuts who cares more about Mother Earth than than unborn babies. God says murder is wrong. Obviously for another post but some of you are just getting to know me and I thought I'd just throw that out there in case some of you need to leave now.) This particular visit was a special occasion.It was Jake's 13th birthday and these sandwiches are his absolute favorite so were splurging. They of course made YellowBoy's sandwich wrong. We do know it's weird to go to a sub shop and just want meat on bread and NOTHING ELSE. But that's what he wanted, and that's what we ordered, and that's what I explained to them about the ultra-picky eater. I thought I was very clear. I quote, "He's very picky. So please somehow indicate that all he wants is the bread and these meats and absolutely nothing else on that sandwich." I couldn't see over the counter to where she was writing, but she wrote something, and we sat down to wait.

These masterpieces of wonderfulness take a long time to make, and it was a long line during a Friday lunch rush. Jake and I are salivating thinking of what's to come: corned beef with swiss, their special blend of hot peppers, other peppers and pickled veggies all in some wonderful italian oil concoction that comes on all sandwiches and is what I suspect makes the whole darn thing so hard to duplicate at home, (Yes, I have tried. Repeatedly. I'm on a budget people, and I love to cook, I WILL keep trying) lettuce, tomato, cucumber, sprinkled with their signature spice blend, then toasted to perfection, on their homemade crusty bread. A sandwich so thick you have to unhinge your jaw to take a bit, a sandwich whose last step of construction is a giant, probably patented SQUISH by the artist so that you have SOME hope of your unhinged jaw fitting around a corner. Oh, the bliss. Oh the joy. They call my name. I fetch. YellowBoy's sandwich looks suspiciously thick. We open it up. It has everything on it. Disaster.

I calmly return to the counter and explain. I've only opened the sandwich a tiny bit, to peek at it. I've only exposed the center cut to look at the cross section. It has not been touched by human hands, and has barely been breathed on. He takes the sandwich with a smile and THROWS IT IN THE TRASH. What? No "oops" pile? No "Donate to the Our Center We Made This Sandwich Wrong" pile? No "Staff Take Home at The End of The Day" pile? Are you kidding me? This place which recycles STRAW WRAPPERS throws away perfectly good food? Home Depot won't throw away wrong paint. They sell it to me to paint my tree house. But you'll throw away perfectly good food (ok, not perfectly good, the health department would probably not like it that it left your counter for 20 seconds, but we're not talking stupid government agency here, we're talking normal people common sense.)

I am baffled and appalled by this. The Engineer worked many long years doing the pizza thing. At the end of the night, staff took home those oops pizzas, and those that weren't wanted by staff, he drove to the homeless shelter. They even baked up the last of that day's dough into just plain flat bread because otherwise they'd have to throw it out. And that was in the 1990s before recycling became a religion. How can this sub shop call themselves green and toss food? It goes against common sense.

And it's another example of people trying to look good on the outside, when the problem is really on the inside. It's a matter of heart, and if our hearts aren't in the right place, we sure can't hope to do the right thing. It's the people that matter, not the planet. It's the people.

This is my first alphabe-Thursday post for Ms. Jenny Matlock. Check it out! Great group of bloggers!