Plastic-free: Airplane Food
I was 35,000 feet above sea level. The flight attendant was wheeling the ‘onboard café’ down the aisle and I was starving. She might as well have been peddling crack cocaine. ‘Cuz this woman was dealing in plastic. And I’ve gone plastic-cold-turkey in 2007.
The little pretzels, the cookies, the sandwiches, even the water. All packaged in plastic. The pizza was a maybe, but I wasn’t going to chance it. If I went all trippy and succumbed to its ‘potential no-plastic’ lure and then discovered it indeed had plastic inside that cardboard box – well I’d fall off my no-plastic bandwagon and have to go into rehab.
Fortunately I had come prepared. Or so I thought. I had packed my own nibblies and a can of Dr. Pepper to keep the in-flight munchies at bay.
The Dr. Pepper proved to be a tactical mistake. Metal+Liquid=Confiscated by Security. Yup, there was a cola intervention. SecurityGuy was nice enough to compromise…‘You can drink it now, or throw it away’. EnviroWoman doesn’t like to waste the earth’s resources, so I guzzle-mainlined it so I could to still make my flight.
That also proved to be a tactical mistake. The flight was 5 hours long. Too long for even EnviroWoman’s patient bladder.
It was a bad-karma day, alrighty. Or perhaps my etch-a-sketch wasn’t operating with all its knobs. Because although I had embodied the boy-scout ‘be prepared’ rule when it came to food, I had totally brain-farted on the toiletries issue. It was during the cab ride to the airport when it drifted into my frontal lobe that I had not brought shampoo, conditioner, or soap. I always use what the hotel supplies. Alas…hotels usually package these wee essentials in the evil plastic.
Not good. Not good at all. Cleanliness is next to godliness. And it’s so not good to upset my morning ritual. Especially when travelling. When I do, it kinda feels like I'm camping. My eyes feel all puffy and weepy. My hair feels all dishevelled and bedeviled. And the day…the day just goes off-kilter.
Who knew you’d have to ‘rough it’ at the Hilton Hotel. (and I won't even talk about the mini-bar)
Okay – this is totally off topic. Well kinda. I had never noticed this before - but the airline I was on appeared to have no recycling program onboard. 200 people locked in a plane for 5 hours, and all that trash they generate (which, whoa! was a lot!) gets chucked out. Why don’t airlines have inflight recycling programs?
Lessons learned:
- Dib Dib Dib. Always Be Prepared if you want to get your No-Plastic Badge
- Having numerous diplomas hanging on the wall doesn’t preclude people from doing something Dr. Pepper-stupid.
