Eat that coffee cup!
I looked out from the one room guest apartment in the city where my son lives. His apartment is spotless. Gleaming white walls, a huge library of dustless red spined scriptures and commentaries. Shining tiled floors. Sage and I were there as guests of his sweet growing family for the sabbath.
This city is the most densely populated and homogeneous urban center in Israel. Mostly ultra-orthodox Jews. I admire the communal honoring of the sabbath. I long for it myself. Loudspeakers notify the community that there are only 10 minutes left to light candles. A hushed excitement after closing down the busy week, entering into a sacred time of family and community. Access roads are shut. Internet is turned off. Food for 4 meals is already prepared so as to free up time to gather in prayer, song and learning.
There are powerful lending institutions that operate on a trust basis that can provide you with money, a cellphone, a stroller or a car. Free. The local synagogue is seldom more than a block away and everyone is known to the presiding rabbi and shammas. It is a community that is attuned and supportive ways I often dreamed of when declaiming that ‘it takes a village’.
Right, that is the setting. So, I ask you, in such a tight, mutually responsive community, how is it that the shared public spaces are overflowing with garbage? The entrances of apartments littered with broken bikes and bins, the narrow passageways between buildings are the final resting place for ripped suitcases and broken windows. Cracked sidewalks are strewn with plastic bags and weeds. Even the street poles and power boxes are smeared with flapping fliers and notices. How can it be?
On second thought, that is a pretty smug question. How is that any different from the rest of our world?! To me it is the tragedy of the commons again and again. No one owns those spaces. They belong to an institution, a government, a generic us, and so it is free to foul. It is even rational to foul. Why would you not take advantage of open space to dump your old couch rather than paying for it to be carted off? But of course, when everyone does what is rational for themselves, they bring about an outcome that is irrational for everyone including themselves.
If the problem is tough to solve in a caring and integrated community like Bnei Brak, how much more so when the Commons is our Global Climate! That Commons is shared by not only present friends and foes, by fuel gluts and the energy starved, but also by the unborn future beings whose interests are entwined with the present living.
I think will need more than a page to explore all of that. So back to what I wanted to share with you. A tiny step in the right direction. Edible coffee cups!
When I buy coffee out, I take what they give me. Paper or plastic cup. So, after exploring this fascinating archaeological revelation at Beit Sha’an in northern Israel, I ordered me a cuppa. I did not know that the Israeli National Parks and Antiquities Monuments kiosks will only serve coffee in … edible cups. It is genius. In so many ways. By restricting my options, I believe the common good was served. Not the tragedy of the commons but the contrary. Like the hacks for better habits that you try on when you remove chocolate from your pantry, or alcohol from the home when going dry. The way the 4-year-old marshmallow genius turns his back on the one marshmallow to avoid temptation, trusting that the payoff will be double goodness, just gotta hang in there.
So perhaps there is a way of engineering human behavior for the common good. Just eliminate unhelpful options. While providing really delicious alternatives.
Research on my edible coffee cup manufacturers page tells me that that each year in Australia alone, 1 billion plastic cups are used and discarded. I like that quote because it is a nice robust number. The way I like my coffee. Robust. One Billion! These edible Coffee Cups are made of compressed grains and have a hydrophobic inner lining. And they last about 40 minutes before you need to eat them. If they were served in Starbucks, squatting time would have a natural 40-minute move along. Anyone at Starbucks listening?
