七个便当的故事

《七個便當的故事》

成露茜

一位二、三十餘年來致力於環境保護的學術界朋友，最近棄學從商，自己當老闆，繼承了一個中等規模的家庭企業。幾天前，他感慨的告訴我這個小故事。

他的公司有一百多位員工，採兩班制，每天公司供應中午和晚上的便當，全部都是包給附近一家外賣餐廳，他就任以後也照樣。上個星期，餐聽的老闆娘來送便當，他才突然發覺，一百多個便當盒都是環境殺手保麗龍成品。

他的第一個反應是，最好每位員工各人有一個自己專用的便當盒，每天吃完了隨手洗乾浮，由餐廳來收，再裝第二天的便當。這個想法一傳出去，員工反應不佳，覺得太麻煩了。他又想也許可以恢復十幾年前，政府尚未大力推廣保麗龍時那樣，用傅統的便當盒代替，可是民意也不支持，認為處理不好容易得肝炎。於是他只好跟跟餐廳老闆娘說，請她以後改用紙盒。老闆娘回了句，紙盒成本比保麗龍高，便當就要加價。站在旁邊的財務主任馬上提醒他，現在公司不賺錢，外面競爭激烈，還是以節流為要。

我的朋友說，二十多年來，他幾乎每天寫文章、拉布條、發動抗議、大聲疾吁：環保、環保。到頭來，白己不但是污染環境的共犯，甚至成了它的罪魁禍首，心裏頭實在不好受，這輩子都抬不起頭來了。

The Story of Bento

Recently, one of my friends who had devoted himself to environmental protection for more than 20 years abandoned academia for business. He inherited and operated a medium-scale family enterprise. A few days ago, he told me the following story.

There were more than 100 employees in his company with two shift system. His company contracted with a nearby take out restaurant for lunch and supper. Last week, when the hostess sent the bento, he realized these lunch boxes were environment-killer made of plastic foam.

His first reaction was it would be better that every employee had his own lunch box which they can wash the boxes after they finished the dinner. And the staff of the restaurant would take the boxes away, and then fill them with food. When his idea had got out, the employees thought it was inconvenient. He thought maybe he could replace lunch boxes by traditional ones like ten years ago when the government had not popularized the plastic foam. However, the employees disagreed with the idea neither, as they though it might result in hepatitis without proper processing. So he had to advise the hostess to substitute paper boxes for plastic ones. The hostess answered if they did so, the price of box lunch should be raised, as the cost of paper boxes was higher than plastic ones’. The financial executive standing near him reminded him immediately that their company should cut down expenditure because of the fierce competition and financial shortage.

My friend said, for more than 20 years, he wrote article, stretched banner, launched protest, appealed to protect environment. But now, he has become accomplice of polluting the environment, even the chief culprit, so he felt sad and ashamed of it in his whole life.