In Garbology at the Lab school you learn a variety of things including: history, culture, economics, geography and presentation. You need to know the history of many things when presenting something to someone. Like in this case we didn’t know that people already knew about Laramie's recycling service, they just didn’t want it because of something called The ARK, which used to be the recycling service in Laramie, but it got kicked out when the city took over. This would have been great information to know about prior to our meetings, but our ignorance hurt us. It turns out that when you're presenting something that costs companies money, and only maybe gets them more customers, then you need to know the whole story. Instead of dwelling in the past, we ask Laramie local businesses to let by-gones be by-gones, and do what is better for the environment.

People will bring up opportunity cost when we tell them about the alternative boxes. Obviously they would mention this, they could spend that on something their business actually needs. There is no demand with their customers, so there is no reason they should supply it. The price point of the compostable boxes is too high for some businesses, some can't meet it and others don’t feel the need to meet it because their customers don’t want it. So, really the odds are against our goal to eliminate the use of Styrofoam boxes in Laramie local businesses. In the end, its really the businesses owner who makes the choice, the only thing we can do as a school is inform you of the affect it has on the environment and the possible alternatives. Hopefully, once they know the affect the Styrofoam has on the environment their morals will over power their need for money and they will change their bad habit.