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By Root 1043 0

I added a few splashes of soy sauce to marinate the chicken, along with a spoonful of cornstarch. While the chicken was cooking in about a tablespoon of vegetable oil, I added a splash of Chinese rice wine, followed by another few splashes of soy sauce and some jarred hot sauce. All these things came out of glass bottles or jars except for the cornstarch, which was in a small cardboard box. All these ingredients, too, had been in my kitchen for the better part of a year. How many one-pint servings of chicken and broccoli, then, could each bottle make? The task of weighing out the refuse for my single serving proved excruciatingly difficult, especially since most of these bottles in my cupboard were only partially full. In the case of the rice wine, I thankfully used up the last two tablespoons or so from the bottle, so the weight of the bottle was easy to calculate. But the soy sauce bottle was about half full, so I had to divide the weight of the contents printed on its label by half. Following numerous tedious calculations, I sat down to make the following list:

¾-POUND CHICKEN BREAST:

Butcher paper from chicken = 0.25 ounce (perhaps mostly because it was wet)

½ POUND BROCCOLI:

Plastic bag from the broccoli (did this really weigh anything? It didn’t register on the kitchen scale ...) 0.005 ounce

1 TABLESPOON SOY SAUCE:

Total weight of empty bottle = 15.5 ounces

Number of 1-tablespoon uses per bottle = 34

So total glass waste of a 1-tablespoon serving (15.5 ÷ 34) = 0.45 ounce

2 TABLESPOONS RICE WINE:

Total weight of empty 24-ounce bottle = 16 ounces

Number of 1-tablespoon uses per bottle = 28

Number of 2-tablespoon uses per bottle (28 ÷ 2) = 14

So total glass waste of a 2-tablespoon serving (16 ÷ 14) = 0.43 ounce

1 TEASPOON HOT CHILI SAUCE:

Total weight of empty 18-ounce plastic jar = 5 ounces

Number of 1-teaspoon uses per bottle = 102

So total plastic waste of a 1-teaspoon serving (5 ÷ 102) = 0-05 ounce

1 TABLESPOON CORNSTARCH:

Total weight of empty cardboard box of cornstarch: 2 ounces

Number of 1-tablespoon uses per box = 56

So total cardboard waste of a 1-tablespoon serving (2 ÷ 56) = 0.035 ounce

1 TABLESPOON VEGETABLE OIL:

Total weight of empty (because I drained it!) 24-ounce plastic bottle = 1 ounce

Number of 1-tablespoon uses per bottle = 28

So total plastic waste of a 1-tablespoon serving (1 ÷ 28) = 0.035 ounce

TOTAL GARBAGE WASTE FOR SINGLE SERVING OF HOME-COOKED CHICKEN WITH BROCCOLI: 1.255 OUNCES

For the next part of the weigh-in, a couple of days later, I picked up the phone and, with a paper menu in hand, dialed the number of the nearest Chinese takeout restaurant. I ordered a pint of chicken and broccoli, served with white rice, and a can of soda. Then I waited.

An order of plain old chicken and broccoli from a slipshod Chinese takeout restaurant with fiberglass between the counterperson and the customer would not ordinarily have been my meal of choice for compromising my not-eating-out mission. This sacrifice was purely for the purposes of the weigh-in. Still, as I walked down the street to pick up my order a few minutes later, I realized how strangely excited I was about eating it. I’d had this same dish countless times throughout my life, near identical in flavor and appearance, from countless Chinese takeout places that were nearly identical in appearance as well. By the time I finished my lunch, which was quite a lot for one person, I was strangely satisfied. The meal wasn’t great—actually, it was a lot worse than I’d expected it to taste: too sweet, the sauce thick and gloppy from too much cornstarch. But maybe that was a good thing for now. I’d be able to keep eating in a little more confidently now than if it had been better.

I made sure the kitchen scale was set at zero before I weighed all the disposables from the takeout meal. On went the foam tray, now emptied, along with the fork, stack of napkins, extra sauce packets, paper bag, and the plastic bag that had held everything. The takeout place had given me a can of soda as part of the lunch special, so after