yeah, my environmentalism usually overpowers my depression for washing dishes (plus I have nice dishes that I like to use), but when I took an environmentalism class and we looked at the embodied energy numbers it's kinda wild how disposable paper stacks up to reused ceramics, like, you'd assume it's a lot lower and that it take a while for reusing ceramic plates to become more efficient, but holy shit it really takes forever, iirc our comparison of styrofoam vs ceramics for coffee cups estimated that even with a dishwasher (so more efficient washing) the embodied energy of the ceramic mug took like 10,000 uses to equalize with using styrofoam. obv styrofoam does create a downstream waste management problem with all that shit, and that isn't well addressed by embodied energy calculation, but it kinda blew me away how just using something really really lightweight and compostable is really underappreciated in environmental discourse.
yeah, my environmentalism usually overpowers my depression for washing dishes (plus I have nice dishes that I like to use), but when I took an environmentalism class and we looked at the embodied energy numbers it's kinda wild how disposable paper stacks up to reused ceramics, like, you'd assume it's a lot lower and that it take a while for reusing ceramic plates to become more efficient, but holy shit it really takes forever, iirc our comparison of styrofoam vs ceramics for coffee cups estimated that even with a dishwasher (so more efficient washing) the embodied energy of the ceramic mug took like 10,000 uses to equalize with using styrofoam. obv styrofoam does create a downstream waste management problem with all that shit, and that isn't well addressed by embodied energy calculation, but it kinda blew me away how just using something really really lightweight and compostable is really underappreciated in environmental discourse.