I love ice creams. Rich, creamy, heavenly, delicious –oh well I could go on and on just thinking of the dollops of ice cream that come in all kinds of flavors, colors and textures in the market. I know all of you are already creating mental images of the last time you had an ice cream. It fills our heart with pleasure, there is something feel good about it. Sitting on a warm pleasant day in our favorite joint whether with friends, family or alone, licking our favorite ice cream is definitely a great pastime. But the messiest thing is to catch the dripping cream after you bite into your favorite cone and it starts falling onto your wrist. Sure you agree with me recalling your last experience of biting into your cone.
But did you know the harmless pastime of eating ice cream is actually causing a great harm to our earth? Difficult to see what connection there is between eating an ice cream and harming environment? About one million trees are cut each year to provide you with the paper napkins that are used to wipe the cream off our hands even as we indulge in such a mundane activity as eating an ice cream. Two high school boys in Denver were passing by a neighborhood ice cream shop when they noticed two little kids with drippy hands and messy clothes as they were licking their ice cream. But what startled them was how their mom reached out for a handful of paper napkins to clean the toddlers. The boys did not forget this scene, they went back and after a few years of experiment have now come up with their version of a drip drop edible saucer which can catch the dripping ice cream and can be eaten too.
Image: internet source
Well may be all of us may not be inspired to invent something but one thing we can do is think how we can avoid using paper napkins all the time and switch over to handkerchiefs, cloth towels and dish towels like the good old days.