The Paper Plate Debate

Our dishwasher broke.  This is bad news for my husband and children, who must now wash the dishes by hand.  (I'm exempt because I do the laundry.  This is how deals are done in the Rettmann household).  Every single person in this house does not like to wash dishes.  Before the dishwasher broke, it was not uncommon for us to run it twice a day.  This might be how we wore out the motherboard.  (Subject for another post:  If everything has a motherboard, causing everything to break twice as fast as they did in the pre-motherboard era of manufacturing, causing us to buy twice as many of these things, are they really more efficient?  But I digress).

Last night friends gathered at one of our planned-at-the-last-minute gatherings.  The hostess chose paper plates.  I would have, too, since the only way to serve the number of people at this party would be to break out the 50 year old gold-edged china.  Friends, I love you all, but that's not going to happen on your average May Saturday night.  Our hostess said she felt a little guilty, but not really.  One mother of a young family stated her household switches to paper all summer, choosing the uncoated, paper plate.  We talked through the pros and cons of both reusable and disposable dishes, insofar as we knew them.  Never satisfied with just looking at the surface of a question, I decided to spend my Sunday morning digging more deeply into the paper plate debate.

First let me say that one Sunday morning of research is not enough time to do this subject justice.  To do a full-blown analysis, here are the questions that would need to be answered, starting with paper plates:  1)  What is the cost per unit of production (a plate)?  2)  What are the inputs in terms of water, electricity, wood, and costs of harvesting and transporting the wood to the production plant?  3)  What are the outputs in terms of waste, toxic chemicals, and transportation costs to get the finished product to store?  For ceramic, repeat the process, substituting clay and paint for wood, and add in the costs to the user in terms or washing, comparing both hand washing versus the dishwasher.

So I cheated.  I used Google.  It's not like I'm getting paid to write this blog.  The general concensus of online discussion is that ceramic beats paper.  But I'm going to throw in one more variable that may tip the scales in favor of paper, and that is the billable rate.  What is your billable rate?  Do you know?  Have you ever thought about it?  Your billable rate is whatever you could reasonable charge to perform whatever it is you are skilled at doing in the open marketplace.

I'll use a good friend of mine as an example.  This friend has a masters degree and a fancy title.  He claims his billable rate is $250 per hour.  So if he washes dishes for 5 hours per week, theoretically, that "costs" his household $1,250 in lost opportunity.  Per week!  In other words, if my friend wasn't washing dishes, he could be doing something else much more financially productive.  In theory.

There is one other consideration for me.  When I buy paper products, I turn the package around to see who manufactured them.  It turns out that one company, Georgia-Pacific, has a near monopoly on the manufacture of paper plates and other disposable tableware.  So this can get tricky.  Why should I care who makes my plates?  Here's why.  The short version of the story is that Georgia-Pacific is part of a conglomerate owned by the Koch brothers who support 501(c)4 groups who I strongly disagree with politically.  It would spoil my appetite to know that even a few pennies of mine had gone to support those angry old men and their ilk.  It takes just a few seconds to check who made the plates, or toilet paper, or paper towels, or facial tissue.

Goodness, it's complicated being Green in the Real World!

Bottom line, use ceramic when you can.  Use paper when you have to.  Each family has to decide for itself what is the best use of time and resources.  If you can afford it, go for the biodegradable bamboo high end stuff.  If you can't, unwaxed paper is the best for the environment and also the cheapest.  If you are so inclined, check to see who made your product, and support the manufacturers who aren't sticking their noses into politics.  At some point they hopefully will figure out that, when 50% of the country disagrees with the other 50%, and you pick a side, you are pissing off half of your potential customer base.  But that's a story for another day.