Speak up! The world is listening

Last week I stumbled across a cute little cafe called Misschu, down an alley near Bondi Beach. As I sat down and ordered a coffee, I noticed on the table a holding cup full of disposable chopsticks. It’s not something that would have struck me before, but since starting work at Greenpeace I’ve become aware of how disposable chopsticks seriously eats into our forest resources.

Then I took a look around at the tables of other patrons. Their food was being served in throwaway cardboard boxes. My coffee arrived served in a takeaway cup, even though I was eating in. And this bothered me. What a waste! I was used to seeing that prevalence of disposable packaging in Asia but I had always given Australia credit for being fairly environmentally conscious. (Note, this was a Vietnamese eatery and thus took aesthetic cues from that habit.)

I chewed my bottom lip. Do I say something? I wanted to but I was certain the waitress would roll her eyes at me and think to herself, “here we go, another one of those annoying greenies.”

Well, I figured I could bring it up nicely, and that nothing ever changed in this world without someone speaking up. And maybe they have a legitimate reason for the throwaway packaging. That’s the other great thing about speaking up – sometimes you’re wrong, and you learn something new.

I inquired with the waitress and she looked at me embarrassed and apologetic. “Quite a few people have mentioned that, but that’s just how this place has been setup. As a [take-away] canteen.”

While it may appear that my words had little effect, who knows. It has joined the words of other ‘speaker-uper-ers’ past and future that will perhaps accumulate to the point in which Misschu’s owner decides to offer a non-disposable option for diners eating in.

Vegetarianism too is something that dawned on me slowly (technically I’m more of a “social meat-eater”, in the same way that some people are “social drinkers” or “social smokers”.) It was like losing contact with a friend, but realizing that maybe it’s for the best. There was a major contributing factor to this new found eating habit. I became friends with a vegetarian couple, even living with them for one month while I was homeless. The guy of the couple was quite hectoring about vegetarianism. He’d rattle off statistics and facts about the environmental benefits of vegetarianism, or more often, lecture me on the health dangers of eating meat.

Sometimes he’d say things like, “One day we’re going to think of meat the same way we think of cigarettes. There’s going to be sold in the 18+ section with warning labels all over them.”

At the time I though little of it, and would humor him by nodding with eyes glazed over. Little did I know his words were squirreling their way into my mind. His nagging motherly ways finally got to me.

Other small factors: many of my workmates and other friends are vegetarian and in eating with them I was introduced to a lot of yummy vegetarian dishes. And now that I’m cooking for myself more, meat dishes is more expensive.

In activism, it’s not uncommon to face the question, “but don’t you think this is all a waste of time? People won’t listen. Or they’ll listen, but they won’t actually change.” I like to remind people:

1. You don’t know what impact your words or actions might have. Just as I, at the time, seemed pretty unresponsive to my vegetarian friend’s lecturing, with much persistence he eventually wore me down.

2. You are one drop, of a large tidal wave. My friend alone probably wouldn’t have converted me into vegetarianism, but together the multitudes of influences did.

Read part two of this post: The chopstick dilemma: disposable vs. reuseable, bamboo vs. plastic