In Canada, those beer cases are what we return the bottles in...they are hardly something to consider throwing away. But, aside from whatever cardboard you have, it is really not that much to tear up. Taking the carton down to its flatness, it easily tears if you put emphasis on the creases. A box knife will make short work of it; just lay it on hard surface and swipe it. Paper plates...you could just assume its small enough as it is and put them into the compost. But, here....we give cardboard, milk cartons, paper plates, orange juice containers....and their ilk, to the "blue box"....our name for the box that goes out to the curbside for pickup by special trucks that takes it to a recycling station. They frown on seeing material like that in the garbage. Ontario has reduced its "garbage" just in the last half-dozen years, by about 40%. Besides, our garbage goes to a site in Michigan...and soon, by 2010....no more. By that time, what is in our garbage now will be reduced that much more by 30%. Reduce, re-use, re-cyle.

Greetings...if HEB is a shopping place for you, you must be in Texas!!! I'm so glad to have an accomplice!! We have between 35 and 45 folks at Thanksgiving. I use real tablecloths, real silverware (bundled into the oversized paper napkins and tied with a raffia bow...you can just pick up the packet of napkin fork and knife at the end of the buffet line) To answer your real question :^)... I buy the hard plastic plates and cups (solid gold color) from "Wally's" Card and Party Factory and I buy the oversized napkins from Hobby Lobby. I also buy smaller paper plates and the little cocktail sized napkins...all to match the oversized napkins... for the dessert table. I put plastic forks in a big glass cylinder on the dessert table as well. The plates and napkins at Hobby Lobby are 50% off right now, and there is a coupon out there for 5$ off your purchase at Card and Party. HTH

I try to avoid putting acidic food into plastic cups or on plastic or paper plates, as I can't be sure that some possibly nefarious chemicals may not leach out into the food.. I try to avoid heating/reheating food in paper or plastic plates or containers in the microwave, for the same reason, and I think that the possibility of leakage is increased with the heating. The other night at pizza and movie night at church, they had plastic coated paper plates, and cutlery, both of which I used ... ... but instead of having the coffee in the styrofoam cup provided, I picked up a mug from the shelf, as I like the taste better (and the quantity is larger) ... ... and I washed it myself. The old guys who meet for coffee at church use ceramic mugs, which suits me fine ... and I usually get stuck with washing most of them (the mugs - not the guys). With the increase in the population of the world, they've been telling us to use less paper, as the trees produce the oxygen which is essential to our continued life, and most of the plastics are sourced from petroleum, which took millions of years to make, and which we've been using for less than 100 years as though it's going out of style. Our grandkids will be angry that we've used up much of the easily-obtainable petroleum (and it took us a long time to decide to build fuel-efficient cars). ole joyful

We were feeding the outside neighborhood cats on regular dishes that we would bring in to be washed, put the dish in the sink covered with water until I got around to using soap and hot water. Well one of my cats loves to get in the sink and play in the water and he got an infection, probably from the dish that the outside cat had used. $441 later at the vet, we figured out how our "house" cat got the infection. Now we only use paper plates to feed outdoor critters.