Last week I had a
#TrashGirlProblem that I just can't shake...and it may or may not be solved by eating as much frozen yogurt as possible while I mull it over...
I have a long standing relationship with frozen yogurt.
Spring semester of my Junior year of college, a business called
The Frosty Parrot
opened up just steps away from campus. It was love at first taste— colorful, customizable, affordable and down right delicious. Frozen yogurt became my weekly
and sometimes bi and tri weekly event
that year. But like any lover caught with their trousers down
or, with a plastic spoon in their mouth, my first love Trash caught me by surprise when he pointed out the overstuffed trashcans full of one time use FroYo bowls. It wasn't until I came to LA that another
low impact trasher I met at a panel provided the love triangle counseling session I needed.
Less than a week after my counseling session I was having a FroYo kind of day.
You know those days, where the world tries to tear you down and your roommate put his recyclables in the wrong bin..AGAIN and your only solace in the cold, dark recesses of the dumpster that is your day is the bright cheer of a self serve yogurt shop...Armed with my own carefully selected Harry Potter Butterbeer Mug & spoon I headed into my local YogurtLand for a low impact,
high sugar, treat.
The idea was easy:
1. weigh my bowl prior to yogurt and toppings selection
2. fill my cup with frozen bliss
3. subtract weight of bowl from final weight.
Go Math!
Easy, simple! Right?
Nope.
Not only did the cashier have a hard time understanding what I was asking her to do, she told me the "scales don't work like that." They automatically subtract the weight of the disposable paper cup from the overall weight. My awesome HP Mug was going to be heavier and would therefore cost more than their cup.
What the crap technology!
At least I brought my spoon...
Would I need to give up self serve frozen yogurt to lessen my environmental impact?
File that under: questions Google was made for.
Some FroYo establishments are already cleaning up their act by offering bowl alternatives or discounts to their customers who bring their own. FroYo joints in Austin, Portland,
of course, the hipsters are showing everyone up, San Francisco, San Diego and British Colombia, Canada all have frozen yogurt places that offer reusable bowls on site. A "for here" option similar to what coffee shops do with their reusable mugs.
Blogger
FroYo Girl (man, there really is a blog for everything) bought this cool FroYo bowl at a shop in Palo Alto, CA that gives a discount for bringing your own.
Totally digging the Monsters Inc vibe
Other ways of "greening" FroYo are the options for recycling or composting the cups & spoons. However, recycling only works if the town the business is in collects plastic lined paperboard cups (that's what FroYo cups are) and not all do. However, even more restrictive is the fact that the cups are contaminated with food waste. Most recycling centers don't accept any recyclable materials with food residue and the plight of the pizza box continues...
Compostable cups & spoons are only any good if the town has the facility to compost it. The cups and spoons will degrade more quickly in a landfill than if they were plastic but it still gets thrown "away" like any other garbage. The whole point of making it compostable (to let it biodegrade back into soil) is lost!
So we're back at square one: reusable bowls.
I went back to my own YogurtLand and did a little research. Their cup, empty was .41 oz. My spectacular Harry Potter mug was 3.7 oz which would equate to an extra $1.66 on top of how much yogurt I bought. One of my plastic tupperware containers weighed .5 oz which would add $0.21 to my over all frozen yogurt. Much more manageable, like a sustainable yogurt tax but not as cool as my HP mug..
Left: My superb HP mug, made for FroYo indulging
Right: Yogurtland's paperboard cup
Typical tupperware container
Now as a reminder this is a straight trash blog- for the sake of simplicity and truly diving in to a deep understanding of how, what and why we consume I am ignoring the Life Cycle Assesment (LCA) that can be done between reusable and disposable items. In my world, reusable is always Thor, the strong, reliable brother & single use is always Loki, the evil annoying brother who just won't die!
According to YogurtLand
their "eco friendly" practice is their new
re-usable spoons. But the spoon is a LIE! Those spoons go into the trash just like any other single use plastic spoon
would.
Like most frozen yogurt chains YogurtLand is a franchise. According to their franchise FAQ's, "supplies are purchased from approved vendors," meaning that YogurtLand, and their franchisees could instill more sustainable practices by implementing in-house reusable bowls or discounts to those who bring their own. There was even a
change.org petition to YogurtLand CEO to design reusable cups so folks could do just that.
Frozen yogurt joints as well as most other grab n go businesses haven't been as environmentally sound as they could be. But they seem to be working on it slowly. When I asked the employee to weigh my empty cups for this post he replied, "We can't do that, yet". Yet?! There's hope!
Rethinking reusable bowls would not only lessen FroYo shops environmental impact, but would improve their overall bottom line by reducing operational costs and catering to a growing conscious consumer base. Until then, trashing less starts with the trasher herself. I am willing to take the 21 cent hit for my soul renewing frozen delicacy. Hey, what can I say? I like my yogurt frosty! !
I will eat FroYo in the name of science or Trash any day!
