Gas prices have nixed my willingness to order delivery food any longer.

Last Thursday, Marc and I decided I would order myself chinese food for dinner, which thrilled me, as I rarely get to eat the stuff… Marc hates it.  It was convenient, however, for we were travelling that weekend and wanted no mess to clean up for the next day.

I ordered food from a place I know has decent food (I have yet to find really great Chinese food around North Hills… I should check with North Hills Buzz…) and paid for my meal via credit card.  By the time my delivery guy got there, I had my tip ready to hand over:  three dollars.

Three dollars isn’t much, and I always feel like I should tips something more like five, but for a $10 order, I guess a $3 tip isn’t bad.  I’m all about decent tipping.  Ask about anyone who really knows me.

As soon as I got my food and the very nice man left (I confused the sweet Asian guy when I said “Have a lovely night”… next time, I shall stick to “Have a good night” instead), I started unpacking my less than eco-friendly-wrapped cuisine and started analyzing my tip even more.

Then it hit me.

Energy prices are still rising.  Granted, gas prices have dropped, but still, what is the difference between $4 a gallon and $3.70 a gallon? 

So, essentially, my tip did not cover even a single gallon of gasoline for my nice delivery guy.  Who probably doesn’t get paid enough as is.

Dang!  That guy used a gallon of gas to drop off my food for me, and my tip still means he is losing money on that delivery.

Of course, I’m thinking out that he could make a lot of money if he was delivering to many people in the same area on that trip, but I have my doubts.  A Thursday night and at least nine other local oriental restaurants people could order from?  Nope.  I was likely a single stop trip.  A trip where he is losing money.

So… for energy costs, for natural resources, for humanity for this guy trying to make a living, I guess I can’t order delivery anymore unless I can tip that driver the monetary value of at least two gallons of gas (my own arbitrary decision). 

And frankly, I can’t justify giving someone an $8 tip on a $10 order.

So maybe I should just cook more afterall, right?

Tokyo’s newest innovation in green thinking, a bra that holds your chopsticks, takes a truth-is-stranger-than-fiction approach to fashion, novelty and environmentalism.

Sound ridiculous (and looks more ridiculous), eh?

When you consider that those tiny little chopsticks accumulate about 90,000 tons (25 billion sets of chopsticks~ or 200 sets per person) a year in Japan alone, suddenly the concept of easy-to-find reusable utensils is a great idea!  That tiny country imports and consumes half of all rainforest wood sold worldwide!  

Then if you consider how we Americans rely on disposable plastic, what a real mess we make of the world!

San Fran has a project to take used chopsticks from area restaurants for a sculpture, the Waribashi Project SF.  Ultimately, I’m relying on the art world to (perhaps accidentally) document the disposable mentality of this era in time as well as its unintentional consequences.

Some great alternatives to disposables exists however.  Just check out Kim’s blog for some ideas.

Now, if our ownfast-food worshipping society could find a way to end the absurdity of those disposable plastic spork and knife combos by carrying reusable utensils in our underwear…