Taking the Green Step Forward

Last night before catching the special screening of Alice in Wonderland, my blogger friend Earth and I had dinner at El Pollo Loco. It was the first time I had tried that restaurant and I was quite disappointed for two reasons. For one, I was expecting something different when I ordered the nachos but I ended up with something that was too fried/oily for my taste. To be fair, the soft taco I ordered was tasty, but not as good as I was hoping it would be. I think Earth liked the taco she ordered though, because when I finally arrived, she went to get another one. What disappointed me though was that almost everything we ordered came in styrofoam boxes. And take note: we ordred for dine-in.

Albeit, comparatively, I am not a very staunch advocate for the environment, but I have realized that each one of us has to take responsibility for our share of destruction to our environment. This is why I applaud restaurants that make an effort to make their carbon footprint impact less. For example, when I was in Cebu last week, the Taters store I ordered in had a big sign encouraging customers to not take too many tissues and plastic bags. Starbucks likewise has that sign posted by their tissue dispensers. 


During the recent Superbowl, there was an ad about the audi green police and it was nice to see that even these companies are trying to make an impact on changing the habits of people around the world. Even though the ad was a bit of a caricature of the Green Police, which are environment advocates and in various parts of the world, the Audi Green Police tries to help consumers make more environmentally-appropriate choices, such as whether to use paper or plastic.

The real Green Police is an environmental task force that aims to monitor citizens of New York (there is also a UK counterpart)  and their waste management habits as well as their CO2 emissions. I hope we can have something to this regard also here in Manila. I think we are a little to callous and careless about our wastes and while I do see the convenience plastic, styro and the like give us, it needs to be changed or else we will have another Typhoon Ondoy disaster in the making.