Gimme a better earth!

I live in Ithaca, and my favorite coffee is not found at the nationwide Starbucks, but I go get it from the local and nice Gimme! coffee. Gimme is really an example of success for me, it has the spirit of localism, yet the brand has the image and quality of the big chains. Anyway, I don't want to talk about coffee, but I want to mention another thing that I like about this place.

You know when you go into one of those fast food places, and you want to get some ketchup, or even some black pepper, how about some salt?! What do you do? You find those little packs, you open it and it will give you very little of any of the spice that you want. What is that? It is the CIVILIZATION OF DISPOSABLE. We live in the world of disposable today. Plastic plates, plastic utensils, plastic cups.... Can we really count how many plastic/disposables we use every day. We just don't see the rest of the picture. We use them, then throw 'em. Looks easy. Well, but it is not easy on our earth. It's suffering, it's been suffering for years, and we just add tons and tons of suffering to her lungs every day, 360 days a year.

With that in mind, we can now appreciate Gimme coffee stores when we go there, and find a little jar (or whatever it is called!!) with "clean spoons", and another for "dirty spoons". This is what they make available for customers to stir their drinks instead of a disposable piece of wood or piece of plastic! Does that sound primitive to anyone? Well, I see this little practice as highly civilised. The Civilization of Disposable is meant to fall, sooner or later, because it is working against Nature itself. When Man and Nature combat, the latter wins. And usually it is not a pretty war. Too many victims will fall, from both sides. What all conscious people should do is work for a new civilization, The Civilization of No-Waste. Or we might find a better name for it. What matters is that this new civilization will be "truly" smart and truly scientific, both in theory and in action. A civilization that knows a lot of scientific facts but acts in the best way to misuse or not use those facts at all is just tooooo stupid to survive!