Food for thought from Subway

Inspiration for the latest field report comes from a sandwich run to Subway.  Today at lunch, I took a closer look at those unassuming plastic Subway bags and paper napkins.

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Walking away from the register, my delicious sandwich and cookies are all tucked safely away in their Subway bag.  It's a nice package - it's easy to transport and even comes with a paper napkin or two.  

But do we ever stop to think about that plastic bag Subway sandwiches come in?

The future of plastic bags - the kind you get from places like Wal-Mart and the grocery store, is in limbo.  For example, the City of Austin has placed a ban on these kinds of bags starting in March of 2013.  There is a whole slew of arguments, background info, and details that go into that debate.  But, bottom-line, people are starting to acknowledge plastic bags and their consequences on the environment.

So, going back to Subway, I wonder what will happen to their packaging in the future (either near or distant).  What would happen if they eliminated the plastic bag from their whole equation?  HEB, the popular grocery store in Texas, is having to undergo training for their staff in preparation for the Austin plastic bag ban.  According to this article, they are incurring a pretty hefty fee.  I wonder how much it would cost Subway to train their employees to simply say ‘Would you like to forgo a plastic bag today?’  How hard could it be?  It sounds kind of like the ‘Would you like to Supersize that?’ … and that seems to be working pretty well.

Some Subway locations have already eliminated the use of the plastic bag.  While volunteering with Keep Austin Beautiful at a UT football game, I was introduced to a pilot program that tries to encourage fans to recycle and compost their waste, rather than mindlessly chucking it in the garbage.  The Subway in the food court on the north end zone did not package up sandwiches in plastic bags.  I don’t know if this was due to KAB encouraging them to eliminate the bags, or some internal Subway initiative.  But, everyone seemed just fine with carrying their sandwich away wrapped up in the Subway paper wrapper.  The effect: less waste is having to be processed.  Now that is a real touchdown! 

Moving to the paper napkin.  I noticed today that it said ‘Please recycle or compost this napkin’

Compost?!??

Building off what I learned at the KAB volunteer event, apparently food scraps and paper can go into a compost facility and be turned into good soil that can be sold for use in gardens.  The catch is, it has to be properly handled.  Say some food from dinner goes into the garbage.  I used to think ‘hey, food is food, it’s organic, won’t those bugs eat it and it’ll break down out there and turn into dirt?’  But, because there is no oxygen present in the landfill, it takes wayyyy longer than you’d think for even the most simple food to decompose.  That’s why programs exist to compost food scraps.  It keeps the food out of the landfill and it creates a useful product from the leftover food scraps.  Pretty cool, huh?  I've heard it referred to as nature's own recycling process :) 

There are cities out there that actually collect compost.  What??!?  Yep, just like there’s a bin for landfill waste and recycling materials, there’d be one strictly for compost.  Check out the progressive program like San Francisco's composting service offered by Recology.  San Francisco is credited with being America's greenest city and diverts 78% of its waste away from landfills.   Cities like Austin do not currently have a compost collection service, though.  One option is to collect your compost and either process it at your house via a backyard compost pile or you can collect it and take scraps to a nearby community garden (see this post for more info). 

A cool image of what can be composted! 

    

So, kudos to Subway for using recycled paper for their napkins and for eliminating the plastic bag (in some locations).  And, take another look at that bag.  When did the green leaf come into the picture??  Has that always been there with their Eat Fresh campaign?  

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In writing this blog, I came across a really neat collaboration between Recology and IBM.  Check it out!

Several lingering questions I still have:

1. If you put a whole bunch of bright green construction paper into your composite pile (along with other organics and food scraps), what will happen to all that green dye?  Will the resulting soil mix be ... green...?
2. Recycled paper seems to be more and more popular.  But, if all kinds of paper fiber products can go into composting and be broken down, how will that trend impact the recycled paper fiber industry?  And, is it more energy efficient to compost already processed paper fiber or to recycle it into another form of paper product?