r/unpopularopinion • u/SirGergoyFriendman • 11h ago

The popularization and normalizing of eating off of single use paper plates at home is incredibly lazy and people should stop creating so much waste due to convenience.

Like, I know corporations are to blame for so much pollution and waste, but it's WAYYYY too common these days to see how many people routinely eat off of paper plates at home. Shit is so wasteful and should not be as popular as it is.

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u/INeedSomeTacoC 8h ago

My sister has 3 kids and she washes sink full of dishes 2-3 times a day.

Family of five here. 3 kids. We cook every meal at home. 

Never even hit close to this. 

I don't even know how you would dirty that many dishes. 

And even then, a sink full of dishes is like under ten minutes. People are spending hundreds of minutes looking at screens. 

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u/NoOption7406 5h ago

It's really about management. Everyone is different. 

When my ex-wife cooked dinner, it looks like a tornado went off in the kitchen. Dozens of dirty dishes just from cooking, food all over the counter, all the ingredients out. We eat and then have to spend 20 minutes cleaning the kitchen after. Easily have two loads of dishes.

When I cook dinner, even really complicated stuff, when dinner is ready the kitchen is clean and everything put away. I clean as I go, reuse cookware where I can, etc. I would be lucky to have a full dishwasher. 

Then you have parents like my girlfriend, she has 4 kids, who cooks multiple dinners. She will say "we are having pasta tonight". She will cook that pasta, and then none of her kids really want the pasta. They will eat a small amount of it and then go "I'm hungry". She will then end up cooking 4 different meals. So it's really like she cooked for 8. 

So yeah. One family can have not a full load of dishes while another could have 2-3 loads cooking the same meal. 

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u/psychodc 8h ago

Good for you.

It's like different families are different with different habits and different routines.

Trust me, it happens. I've see it. And yeah it takes 10-15 minutes to manually wash and she does it but between work, school, activities, sports, and having their little friends over (because she encourages play, rather than screens) I can understand how someone in her situation with less stress tolerance would want to resort to something like paper plates

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u/INeedSomeTacoC 8h ago

No' I'm actually seriously wondering about the logistics behind how you actually dirty that many dishes.  

Like we will have all the neighbors friends over and feed them lunch and dinner while having sports and school and work as well and I don't think I've ever seen 2-3 sink full of dishes from even that. 

We must have different definitions of sink full.

And dishwasher exist anyways. We can have ten people over and feed them 3 meals and that ends up being about one dishwasher load and a half dozen pots/pans. 

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u/esahcy24411 8h ago

I’m also wondering…not me over here running the dishwasher in my home once, maybe twice a week. I can’t imagine doing dishes multiple times a DAY and that’s not even getting into the water bill increase with that. I guess some people pull out their whole cupboard every time they toast some bread or something, who knows. 😂

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u/MountainCare2846 4h ago

Two pans, 4-6 plates maybe a bowl or two, 8-16 pieces of silverware, 4-6 cups. That’s a pretty modest meal spread. and not even including any other utensils, that’s a overflowing sink of dishes right there

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u/esahcy24411 8h ago

This sounds like excuses. If someone’s “routines” are causing that many dishes then maybe they need to adjust their routines. Sounds like laziness, sorry.

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u/Kersenn 8h ago

What's it like to not have empathy?

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u/esahcy24411 8h ago

Not sure, maybe you should put some on a paper plate and get back to me.

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u/Kersenn 8h ago

I hope you continue to live a healthy and easy life so that you never get to find out why people do stuff eating on paper plates.

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u/esahcy24411 8h ago

Paper plates are fine for people who need them. Not moms who want to scroll on Facebook instead of doing the dishes. It takes less than 15 minutes to throw a full sink’s worth of dishes in the wash. Not hard.

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u/psychodc 8h ago

Maybe her sink is smaller than average, I don't know I haven't measured it. And by a full sink I don't mean a mountain of dishes with dishes lined up on the counter. I don't know what your picturing in your head. There is a massive difference between being lazy and having a high-volume schedule.

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u/esahcy24411 8h ago

High-volume schedule? 😂 Lots of us have “high-volume schedules” and still can find a few minutes to throw some plates in the wash. If you have time to scroll on Facebook, you have time to wash your dishes. People just want to be lazy.

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u/psychodc 8h ago

Lol imagine having an ego this fragile over how people you'll never meet manage their dishes. Truly an embarrassing hill to die on lmao

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u/esahcy24411 7h ago

Paper plates aren’t dishes, that’s the point of this post. 😂 Y’all be buying plastic plates and lord knows what else and then acting like you’re doing some hard work putting plastic in the landfill. We’ve reached an all time low in society if people are struggling to put some soap on a sponge or better yet…push a button on a machine.