Tiny Tip #5 – An ode to my spork

Long gone are the sad plastic sporks that bring back vivid memories of the less then palatable lunches of my middle and high school years.  Sporks are so often associated with unappetizing meals from places you’d rather not be – schools, hospitals etc. But it’s time to change the perception. Perhaps we can make it -dare I say – cool to carry a spork? Take a page out of Billy Madison’s playbook and say “You ain’t cool unless you pee your pants use a spork!”

This past Christmas I was gifted 4 of the most beautiful sporks I had ever seen. These stainless steel beauties have a spoon on one end and a fork with a serrated edge on the other. The gifter had intended the sporks as a bit of a joke. They reasoned since I had recently moved into my tiny house, there was no way I could fit actual cutlery. (For the record, I have an obscene amount of cutlery that I don’t use. I, like many others, am not always good at following my own advice.) Little did they know, I had various sets of silverware hidden in numerous bags, desk drawers and glove compartments that would be happy to return to their home in the silverware drawer.

Yes, I adore my sporks and I’m so glad they were given to me. However, this love song for my spork is more of a breakup song for disposable silverware. An enormous amount of plastic is created (and rarely recycled) purely for single use convenience. Plastic forks, spoons and knives are rarely accepted by recycling programs. And even if they are recycled, recycling uses more resources than simply washing a metal fork. A quick google search for the environmental impacts of plastic silverware will turn up countless results.

Hopefully, you’re convinced that the convenience of a plastic spoon does not outweigh its environmental impact. But what about compostable silverware? Ok, these might be better than plastic but only if they are ACTUALLY composted! If you are not placing your compostables (food, paper plastics, napkins etc) in a separate bin for compost, then they are not being composted!  To be safe, let’s just stick to reusables.

So make a small change and have a big impact. Try carrying a fork, or spork, with you.  No need to buy anything special, use what you already have. If you don’t want to risk losing your cutlery, head to the thrift store. You can find mountains of perfectly good silverware for pennies. If you’d like to join my “movement” (I don’t think one blog post will qualify as a movement) to make sporks cool, here’s the one I use. Metal ain’t your jam? Try bamboo!

I thought it would be witty and adorable to take a picture with my spork hanging off my nose. Turns out, it was neither witty nor adorable. And the spork was so heavy, I had to cheat and rest the fork on my boobs. Well, at least I learned another way that boobs are useful!