I attended the Rose Café talk on Wednesday and was surprised by speaker Chris Alabi’s mindset on sustainability. While I like to think that I am conscious of the environment as I recycle everything that I can, I did not think that much of what he said was realistic in the near future.
One example that Chris brought up was how his purchased bag of popcorn was “unnecessarily wrapped in plastic”. While it may not be a necessity to wrap consumer products from the eyes of us, there may be certain food regulations set by the FDA to protect food products from getting easily contaminated.
Chris also brought up how we could all possibly purchase milk in glass bottles instead of bottling it in plastic. While this could surely be a feasible possibility in rural areas of the United States, it would not be a very feasible idea in an urban center such as New York city as people most likely go to the supermarket by foot or via the subway.
I believe that while maintaining a sustainable mindset is incredibly important, the speaker’s suggestions were rather unrealistic. Personally, if I lived in New York city and a glass gallon of milk was $3 while a plastic carton was $7, I still may purchase the plastic carton because of convenience. Establishing better recycling programs seem more realistic as of now.
I appreciate your honesty of Chris Alabi’s talk at the Rose Cafe event last week. His suggestions do seem unrealistic because grocery supermarkets in NYC do sell plastic cartons of milk and other beverages. It would be difficult for the milk industry or factories to mass-produce glass bottles of milk when they have always produced plastic cartons. It’s true that plastic cartons are not as susceptible to damage as glass bottles. However, I believe that Chris’ idea is something we can consider for the future.