Was this really an unreasonable suggestion?

[Kingfisherfly]

I am involved in organising a sporting event, involved in that I am part of the volunteering team, but basically do as I'm asked on the day, I'm not one of those putting in the real work to make it happen.

One of the volunteer team had suggested we should consider paper water cups, not pastic for future events, and there's been a bit of discussion about how the plastic ones are recyclable, recycling isn't really the answer, paper cups are more expensive, and someone has suggested asking competitors to bring their own reusuable cups (which is becoming more common at these types of events).

Then someone has had a strop about how the organising team has more than enough to do and this is supposed to be fun, not political.

Is it political to raise envirommental issues? Does being volunteer led mean nothing should ever be challenged or changed?

I'm staying well out of it, but the original suggestion was very gently and politely made, and didn't seem unreasonable to me?

People who suggest things should be willing to do the work to figure out feasibility.

They need to answer questions like:
What are the pros and cons of paper cups? What is the price difference? What changes about disposal? Does that change disposal costs? Are they truly better for the environment or does it just seem like that on the surface? What changes in labor will result?

they should also look at other alternatives. Did you know that there are services that will rent reusable plastic water cups to events and the service handles the washing?

Still lots of questions to answer with that approach, but it is another avenue to consider.

@Whyarepeople has hit the nail on the head, often suggestions are made by people who expect others to put in the work to implement them.

Perhaps the person getting frustrated has a billion things to worry about/sort without “helpful” suggestions about cups?

Our PTA discos swapped from fruit shoots to reusable cups of squash for environmental reasons. All it meant was we needed more volunteers to man the drinks stall/more spillages/a whole heap of cups to wash up at the end. Environmental impact when many kids at the school take a fruit shoot every day in their packed lunch = negligible.

I'd imagine it was the 1000th helpful suggestion put forward. I've been part of groups where the people putting forward suggestions considered that as their work done! The minions (i.e. the rest of us) should do the work to carry out their suggestions. Ha ha!

It isn’t ’political’ at all and it feels like a pretty normal thing to discuss if you’re organising an event.

Regardless of the environmental impacts, it’s something that would be completely normal to discuss even just from a cost perspective and for practical reasons (eg if you use plastic or paper cups you need to decide who clears up, who takes them to be recycled etc).

Obviously if you don’t provide disposable cups and ask to bring their own it’s going to be a lot cheaper for the event and also less of a clean-up effort. It’s really not much effort to say ‘We can’t provide disposable cups so please bring your own water bottles which you’ll able to refill on site’ in any comms you’re doing.