Dear Northwest humans,

You might’ve seen me piled up with all of my kinfolk in the cafeteria sometime in your life. I’m light, a great insulator, can hold up to five compartments of food and, well, I’m just going to get right to it: I am overused and under-appreciated.

Now I hope you understand that I’m not trying to impose the idea that styrofoam trays deserve a Bill of Rights or VIP tickets to the next Trayonce concert, but we at least deserve some form of respect. When you pick one of us up, please help us perform to our maximum potential. I see my kind strewn all around the cafeteria every day, styrofoam trays just laying around, who will soon thereafter end up in the trash, unused and untouched.

Oh, and don’t get me started about Fridays. I don’t know what it is about Fridays, but for some reason we seem to be wasted most on those days. I don’t know whether my slightly more attractive sibling, the styrofoam bowl, is just celebrated more on Fridays, or if flinging styrofoam trays around the cafeteria is festive and a concrete statement of “TGIF,” but hopefully you can see where this littering of my kind causes me concern.

I’d like to think that everybody has a purpose, whether you’re made of styrofoam, plastic or carbon. Our sole purpose is to hold food. The thought that people would take us, give us the joy of fulfilling our goal, and then abandon us to hang with our siblings instead (the styrofoam bowls), is downright insulting.  Every day, six hundred to eight hundred trays are used by students. Every day, a sizable number of students grab one of us, just to throw us away. Do you realize that this accounts for many broken dreams and wasted potentials? So in light of this, please do not throw us away, unused and unsatisfied.

Not only am I speaking for my kind, I’m speaking for Mother Earth as well. Although sometimes we don’t like to admit it, we are harmful to nature. We are virtually non-biodegradable, so when we are thrown away, we stay in landfills forever. This is not fun for Mother Earth and not fun for us either. Just like a person who is not on an unlimited data plan, Mother Earth is running out of landfill space, and though it may hurt our kind, it is imperative that the usage of styrofoam trays decreases. When we are created by the ultimate all-mighty, the factory system, 57 chemical byproducts are released, which pollute the air and creates loads of liquid and solid waste. This is extremely bad for the ozone layer and increases global warming. Remember “Ice Age: The Meltdown?”

Yes, styrofoam trays are wondrously efficient and we eliminate the need to wash dishes; people are able to buy us in bulk for an affordable price. Yes, yes, these are all wonderful things, thank you all very much. However, no matter how hard you try to bolster the positive aspects of my kind, in reality, there is nothing luxurious about styrofoam trays, and we even admit it. We are moderately flimsy and sometimes can’t support the weight of the two scoops of popcorn chicken, which will cost you an extra $1.95.

We all need to be more conscious of the serious problem that is “styrofoam tray abandonment.” So my proposal is, please think before you reach for one of my immediate family members. This will not only save the dreams of trays around the world, but it will also decrease waste and improve the environment. Mother Earth will be happy and we can finally catch a break. 

P.S. Now that I think of it, I would really enjoy those VIP Trayonce tickets.

In all sincerity,

A styrofoam tray