Taste tested

Last week at work, I went to the kitchen to retrieve my yogurt from the fridge. I stopped to grab a plastic spoon from the drawer -- my company provides disposable forks, spoons, and knives in each kitchen for the convenience of employees. (I have knives from home at my desk -- for cutting sandwiches and cheese of course! -- but awhile ago I lost my spoon, so I tend to grab a disposable when I need one, and use it for a few days.)

I noticed that the plastic spoons in the drawer were different than usual; they had a slightly different texture, colour and shape. Back at my desk eating my yogurt, I noticed the following text on the handle of the spoon, in slightly raised letters: Biocompostable www.worldcentric.org

Obviously, I immediately opened the web site in my browser to find out more about the provenance of my spoon.

Turns out, my spoon is made from 100% non-GMO corn starch. It is compostable and biodegradable. (Those are not synonymous.) Wow. Who knew there was such a thing? My reaction was predictable.

I took a bite of my spoon.

It was... very chewy. But, it didn't taste like plastic. It didn't really taste like anything. (Ultimately, I chose to spit, not swallow.) The smell was decidedly starchy; again, definitely not plasticky.

My first thought was "cool! A product that solves the problem of all the waste of disposables! And my company is thoughtful enough to support it." I thought it surprising that the facilities dept hadn't even announced such a neat-o move.

But my next thought was that it was kinda... strange? ironic? that the solution to the problem of waste from disposables was to create another disposable product.

I brought a metal spoon from home the next day, to keep in my drawer.

* * * * *

Admittedly, the worldcentric.org site is pretty swell, and provides fair trade and less-environmentally-impactful consumer goods (since we gotta have our consumables!), and it provides many resources for supporting a general public re-think of consuming. Furthermore, they do note the following on their main biocompostables page:

We like to point out that, though using biocompostables is a step towards better environmental sustainability, it is not a solution to our throw-away culture. The use of biocompostables disposables does not in any way discourage use or change the mind-set of using disposable products. Furthermore, even biocompostables (specially bioplastics) may take a long time to biodegrade in landfills.