Forked Up

Today's blog comes to you courtesy of my husband's latest facebook rant. Normally, I ignore them and blow them off but today's I felt deserved repeating. So here it is. (And, here is the link that inspired it: http://www.webstaurantstore.com/medium-weight-white-plastic-fork-1000-cs/130FORK.html)

So it occurs to me that plastic forks are emblematic of all that is wrong with America. You can buy 1000 forks for $10. That is insane, think about that for a second...there are at least 6-9 companies in the supply chain to make a fork. At each stage the companies are incurring cost but somehow it is still profitable to sell each for for .01 cents. Seriously??? Its mind blowing on some level.

Even selling 100 Billion forks per year it is still really impressive that their process is efficient enough to turn a profit - that 100 billion number is real by the way.

The really shit part is that all this energy - the plants to make the fork, the plants to make the plastics, the plants to make the chemicals needed to make the plastic, the fuel to take the forks to the plane, the fuel for the plane, the fuel to deliver the forks from the plane to the story, the fuel for you to drive to the store and back - All this energy is spent on a product that is trash 99% of it life.

The fork is only useful for 5 minutes of its existence but we spent countless hours on its creation and then spend hours more on its disposal. Now, that is truely whacky.....especially because we can't afford health care or school or infrastructure. I guess the problem is that the plastic fork is convenient and those arent. What if we worked on making the important stuff as efficient as forks? And for the companies making the forks - Isn't there some point where satisfying the immediate wants and desires of an adolescent society become unethical? Its really depressing on some level....