Let’s address the elephant in Liberty’s lunchroom: the new wooden utensils.
I can admit that the plastic utensils were less green, but if the school–or anyone, really–chooses to be more eco-friendly, shouldn’t the replacements at least be functional?
I actually like how the wooden utensils look. When I first saw them, my friend had gotten one to eat her fruit with, and I realized these new spoons and forks were actually quite cute. They reminded me of the tiny spoons you get with miniature ice cream cups but enlarged.
What I failed to recognize was how they could make eating your lunch such a bad experience.
First of all, the spoons are so shallow that they don’t even hold anything.
If you want to eat your frozen strawberry cup in a timely manner, you have to lift the cup and barbarically scrape the strawberries into your mouth with the spoon.
After digging away at your fruit, you’re left with a terrible mess. These wooden spoons are like the utensil equivalent of paper straws: they get awfully soggy and leave a bad aftertaste in your mouth.
It’s counterintuitive to eat food that’s supposed to taste a certain way but have it corrupted by the mere instrument you use to deliver it into your mouth.
Although you can avoid tasting the wood, it’ll cost you some peace of mind. You practically have to avoid your mouth from ever touching the utensil or else it’s game over. Without the proper technique, you’ll get a little zest of timber with your food.
Besides, who really has that amount of concentration while trying to enjoy their 35 allotted minutes of lunch? We’re just trying to catch a break between our classes!
You’re probably thinking that as rising individuals in a world that has already done a poor job at protecting the Earth, we, as teenagers, should be happier and more willing to accept greener alternatives–even at the expense of our own convenience; however, this is given that we are actually eliminating unsustainable practices.
I’ve recently learned that we still keep plastic utensils in the cafeteria. If and when the wooden utensils run out at the napkin station, students are finding plastic-packaged sets composed of plastic sporks and mini plastic straws.
In other words, a lot more plastic is being used–more than before the wooden utensils appeared. Therefore, one of the sole benefits of these new utensils, which is to be more green and sustainable, ceases to exist.
If there are no advantages to opting for these wooden utensils, their insufferable dysfunction shouldn’t have to be tolerated by Liberty students.
Lunch is the only part of the school day that guarantees students a moment free of immense concentration and thinking, but it’s subtly being ruined by the troubling emergence of the plastic utensils’ evil twin: the wooden utensils.
