>It was not a dark and stormy night, but it did rain. I was tired and arrived home late (field trips will do that) and I didn’t have the energy or inclination to cook. Amigo likes days like this; we call for pizza. It doesn’t happen often.

Chuck, on the other hand, had to work late as well. He stopped on his way home to pick up Chinese food — Dragon Phoenix, if you’re wondering, which is one of my favorite dishes as well.

Here’s the trash breakdown for the pizza:
Pizza box: recycled clean portions, soaked and composted soiled part
Bag from breadsticks: soaked and composted
Tiny container from dipping sauce – garbage. Sorry. I just couldn’t think of a way to repurpose this weak little item. The sauce, however, joined a tomato sauce I made from garden tomatoes.
Leftovers in refrigerator for Saturday’s Leftover Lunch

Throwaway totals for Chinese dinner:
Cardboard containers (waxy style, containing food residue): compost
Soup container: reused. These are perfect for freezing soup stocks.
Leftovers in refrigerator, as above, for Saturday.
Paper bag for carryout: recycled. It was a little too big to be handy for reuse.
Plastic bag that covers paper bag for carryout: reused
Fortunes recycled
The only parts of this meal that ended up in the garbage: the tiny wrappers from the fortune cookies and the soy sauce packages. Next time Chuck should say “no thanks” to those; we have a bottle of soy sauce at home.

At a glance, the two look fairly equal in waste impact. However, the Chinese food wins in an important way. The pizza order gets delivered on request, costing gas and spewing carbon into the air every time a customer calls. The other restaurant is on the way home; Chuck doesn’t have to go out of his way at all to pick it up. As for carbon footprint, he wins.

As for taste? It depends on your cravings. Both were delicious.