Saturday morning breakfast at Church/pancake supper – the problem of plastic

[Seeler]

Seelerman and I have gotten the habit of going out for breakfast on Saturday mornings.

Various churches in the city serve breakfast as a fundraiser – two are Anglican, one Roman Catholic, and one Presbyterian – each during one Saturday of the month. Other churches have them irregularly. Good meals, good fellowship, reasonable prices – some by donation.

This past week we went for breakfast at the nearby Baptist Church. And I noticed the tiny individual containers of milk or cream, butter or margarine, and various jams and jellies. By the time we had finished our meal and our 2nd cup of coffee each, we had nine or 10 little plastic containers, plus an equal number of plastic pull-tops piled on our plate. And I remembered that the Roman Catholic Church and one of the Anglican churches also use these containers. What a waste!

The other Anglican Church and the Presbyterian that we patronize semi-regularly have cream and milk set out by the coffee pot. The Anglican church has homemade jams in the centre of the tables. While it might be more efficient to use individual, disposable,plastic containers, certainly it is cheaper and more environmentally friendly to use washable pitchures and bowls.

At my home church for our pancake supper, we had butter and syrup available on a side table next to the serving window, and jugs of milk or cream near the coffee perk.

What does your church do?

 

[Mrs.Anteater]

As far as I know, you are not allowed to use food again that has been out on the table, so butter and so on has to be thrown out if not packaged and unopened.

 

[BetteTheRed]

We're pretty environmentally friendly. We don't allow the use of bottled water or styrofoam cups. We have an industrial sanitizer, and tons of dishes, so we don't have much incentive to use disposable dishes.

To save the sanity of our Congregational Life team, we have city-compostable paper cups available, especially in the summer, for both hot and cold drinks.

 

[BetteTheRed]

And yeah, leftover food is a nightmare. We try to reduce this by not overfilling containers, and having lots of handy helpers to re-fill.

But we don't do breakfasts, dinners only. And potluck lunches, which don't have the same rules.

 

[revjohn]

I don't think I have ever served at a church where they use plastic. Takeout styropacks sure, no utensils in that though.

 

[Pinga]

I was part of a planning team for a "tea" that accompanied a sale.
The one person wanted us to buy the little packages -- but the others were not good with the expense or the garbage.
The person who was for it sited the concerns you raised, appropriately, about having open dishes of jam, and potential health concerns.

What we did was plated the food and put a dollop each of strawberry jam, marmalade & cream on each plate. People were happy, and there was significantly less waste.

At the pancake supper, they put a big dish of blueberries out for people to dish onto the pancakes. Also worked well.

 

[KayTheCurler]

I went to an Irish Stew supper last night at a local church. The only waste seemed to be the paper plates for the pie for dessert. Everything else was re-usable or biodegradable.

 

[GiancarloZ]

I've never seen plastic containers and cups or Styrofoam in the two churches which events I regularly attend, my Ev. Lutheran congregation and my former Anglican parish. Both use real dishes and cutlery and, as Bette said, count on multiple volunteers to re-fill the servings on each table or on the buffet.
It used to be the same way in Brazil - but there you have more relaxed laws and regulations on food in private settings such as churches and clubs.
The first time I saw those small plastic cups for Communion was in Canada. They do exist in Brazil but they're common just among Baptists and other very low-church denominations. All the Mainline denominations do common cup.

 

[Mendalla]

The first time I saw those small plastic cups for Communion was in Canada.

Plastic for communion? Wow. My family church had a set of glass shot-glass-type cups with nice specially designed trays for passing them around. Made for a bit of cleanup work after but quite nice and definitely better for the world.

Both use real dishes and cutlery

The UU fellowship has a nice set of dishes that they use for most occasions where food is served. They also have a commercial-grade dishwasher to clean them in. Nice when they are renting the place as a hall for events or hosting things like a church dinner.

 

[GiancarloZ]

Plastic for communion? Wow. My family church had a set of glass shot-glass-type cups with nice specially designed trays for passing them around. Made for a bit of cleanup work after but quite nice and definitely better for the world.

Yes, plastic. At the UCCan congregation close to home. They were like these:

The UU fellowship has a nice set of dishes that they use for most occasions where food is served. They also have a commercial-grade dishwasher to clean them in. Nice when they are renting the place as a hall for events or hosting things like a church dinner.

My former Anglican parish also has very nice sets of dishes and silver and silver-leaned cutlery, but no commercial dishwasher. That generates a big demand of volunteers. The ELCIC parish has a nice, big new kitchen, and lots of nice but very minimalist dishes and cutlery. Scandinavian-style.

 

[BetteTheRed]

We have little glass communion cups that get washed after communion. In the dishwasher; it really does help with the demands on volunteers associated with a big dinner.

 

[GiancarloZ]

Not having a commercial dishwasher in a congregation is just crazy... Many people are needed to wash, sanitize, and dry everything.