What is more eco-friendly, disposible cutlery or washable one?

Question

the complication is that the washable ones waster water and cleaning chemical which end up polluting soil or water. the disposible ones however also pollute even if they are recycled? so whats better?

Answer 1

It depends on what happens to the water you use to wash them, and what you use to wash with.

Example: my home has a complete water recovery system. There is  no net use of water. When I wash cutlery, I use phosphate that becomes a fertilizer for my fields. Yes, phosphate is needed by plants to create energy and to make seeds. You in your turn need to eat food grown with phosphate.

If your water goes our into a lake or river, the phosphate would still be a fertilizer, but we get too much plant growth in the lake or river, and so cause death of animals. You need to redesign your waste water treatment so that both your water is reclaimed and the phosphates fee crops you need to eat.

Your plastic need not be recycled every time you use it. label it with your name and let it dry thoroughly in the sun between uses. Well, same for metal cutlery.

Answer 2

Reusable cutlery is far more eco-friendly.  Unless you get a spoon in the garbage disposal, they're good to go for a lifetime, for the most part.  Disposable cutlery uses resources to produce and adds to landfills.

As far as the washing goes, you can wash dishes with very frugal water use.  My daughter gets an earful from me every time she tries to help out by washing dishes, because she wastes so much water!

There is a new option, compostable cutlery.  After its used it can go straight into the compost pile.

Answer 3

ur hands

Answer 4

Most folks don't recycle plastic cutlery, so it is a total waste. It takes so little water to wash cutlery, and many detergents, like Dawn, are made from eco-friendly chemicals now, that don't pollute. The lifetime of cutlery is amazing as well. I'm using the same ones for about 35 years now -- how many plastic ones would I have loaded into a landfill by now?

"DAWN is a soap that contains anionic and nonionic surfactants (sudsing agents), dispensing aid (ethyl alcohol), water, stabilizing agents, colorant and perfume but does not contain phosphates. ...The mixture of synthetic surfactants, dispensing aid and stabilizing agents help break down the soap, therefore making DAWN biodegradable."

http://www.epinions.com/content_86623882...

Answer 5

Anything disposable is not good.