Disposables ruin dining experience, bad for landfill

HAWKER fare in Penang has been rated among the best in the country.

From flaming woks to boiling pots, there is a plethora of flavours and yummy bites to be explored at most streets.

Unfortunately, it is common nowadays to find the food served with brittle plastic utensils that snap when trying to scoop or break up food into bite sizes.

Then there are the 5mm-thick bamboo chopsticks that come wrapped in plastic.

Next comes the disposable polymer-infused or waxed paper plates and bowls plus plastic cups so thin that they must be handled with tender care to avoid spillage.

Penang hawkers began employing these disposables around late 2021, after dining-in was allowed again following the end of the Covid-19 movement control order.

A disposable plate, for example, costs about two sen each.

No need to hire hands to wash them. Just throw them away after the customer is done eating.

But for the consumer, such a practice ruins the dining experience.

It not only feels inconvenient, it generates a mountain of waste for Penang’s already shrinking landfill space.

Unfortunately, we cannot judge struggling hawkers for their lack of empathy for Mother Nature.

Using Maslow’s Hierachy of Needs as reference, we cannot expect people who are struggling to eke out a living to even ponder on the more refined goals in life.

It’s not easy today to find steady hands to keep washing the plates and bowls and utensils, unless we dare to hire illegal immigrants.

I spoke with a few hawkers and their usual grouses are that locals are not willing to work as dishwashers, while the hawkers cannot afford to pay the rate that locals want.

The hawkers told me that foreign workers are now scarce and too expensive to hire legally.

Even when willing to hire illegal immigrants, they said they could not find any because the former had either returned to their home countries during the movement control order or found better paying jobs.

Coupled with the increasing cost of raw ingredients and consumers controlling their spending, the hawkers have no choice but to save on the cost of washing.

So they serve delicious Penang hawker food with disposable plates, bowls and eating utensils and pass the buck to Mother Nature.

It’s hard for people like them to still care for the environment when their own livelihood is on shaky grounds.

At the same time, our precious landfill is being taxed to the maximum. What a predicament!

The state government has been trying so hard to get Penang to wean off its reliance on single-use plastics, but evidently it is not working.

In fact, customers may even prefer single-use plastic utensils because who knows what and how the dish washers wash their plates and cutlery.

With eating utensils too cheap to be worth the trouble to wash and use for the next customer, the risk of cross-contamination is solved.

Meanwhile, the exponential growth of food delivery services further spurs dependence on single-use plastic containers and utensils.

Some sellers even charge now for these things, but looking at the squadrons of food delivery riders zipping around, the surcharges obviously do not matter to consumers.

There is no one to blame. There are no antagonists or wrongdoers. No one to arrest, no one to fine.

But the environment and more specifically, Penang’s landfill will still suffer.

Environmental NGOs are our ever faithful overseers and they continuously raise the alarm, but that is all they can do.

My favourite char kuey teow stall is by a brother-and-sister team.

They do not speak English. They have no idea what Budget 2023 means to them.

They have tens of customers ordering from them every hour. They have no time to do the dishes, so disposables will do.

They are stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea, so to speak.