Think more!
In today’s issue — some entertaining arithmetics and a lamb’s leg.
Given: 1 day, 1 event, 1 room, 40 participants, 4 coffee breaks. Question: how many paper cups were thrown away?
The answer based on real events: more than 160.
The answer from my ideal world: 40 or even a little more.
Details. Everyone could take 1 cup and just use it during the whole day, mark one’s name on and keep it next to the seat. In reality, these cups were taken and taken again, sometimes more than one cup per coffee break. Simply because they were abundant & available. As a result, we had a mountain of garbage by the end of the day.
They fend off — but the cups are made of paper, thus recyclable, thus it is considered environmentally-friendly. Well, well. But why trashing the product, no matter how “ecological” it may seem? Recycle to expend energy, human labor, water and other resources all over again, to create something else out of it .. Moreover, there’s no infinite recycling, by the way.
We can be a little more careful and gentle, think a little bit ahead, ask ourselves one useful question “why”. Can we?
If you work in the office, it might be useful to get a nice coffee mug. Cool, trendy, only yours. If you are attending an event, just try to throw away less. Paper or plastic — the answer to the question on what’s better is not so obvious, yet to explore.
I once saw a great French short film, it got stuck in my memory forever and largely influenced my worldview. In short: a young couple comes to the family dinner on the occasion of the girl’s great-grandma 100 anniversary. Her mom and grandma are both in the kitchen preparing to send a lamb’s leg into the oven. They saw the bone up, puff and suffer; they use an ax, a saw, but the bone doesn’t give in.
The guy asks the girl, what’s the issue, what is this nonsense. She says that since he can remember, it’s always the same. So does she herself, so does her mother, because her grandma was doing the same, and apparently they all picked the habit up from the grandma. And if he is so interested, he can ask her himself, while the old lady is still alive, what is this tradition about. Which he did. Great grandma then says that she once lived in a small apartment with a tiny kitchen and microscopic tiny stove. To bake her favorite dish, which hapened to be a lamb’s leg, she had to saw the bone.
It took 70 years, and a completely useless action is still in place.
If you are doing something for a long time, if everyone does it, it doesn’t mean that it is correct or smart. Remember the lamb’s leg.
