Corey write:

Picture this: you've just visited about a dozen different shops of varying sizes, jockeying for position, scanning and re-scanning your shopping list, cramming a week's provisions into your backpack. It's 1:30pm and you're hungry. What do you do? You get takeout, or "parcel" as it's known here.

We have a couple standard takeout places here in town, and we usually get it once a week. But no matter what, the whole experience is much different than what we're used to. For example, last week we got takeout from a small place next to the bus stand. To get a parcel, you have to the back of the long, narrow hotel (restaurants are called hotels here) to the kitchen. The kitchen is hot and crowded. You're fighting with the waiters and busboys and other parcel customers to get to the cooks, who make the parcels. The cooks don't really speak English, which is OK, because all of your options are laid out right in front of you. There's no menu, just big shallow bowls full of various dishes. You point and say "half" or "full" for half or full order. Everything comes with rice and dhal, of course. When it's all over you pay the cooks and leave quickly. Once you get outside you realize how hot it was in that kitchen.

You get your parcel home and it looks like this:

From Sustainable Dignity - Corey and Gina in India

From Sustainable Dignity - Corey and Gina in India

From Sustainable Dignity - Corey and Gina in India

As you can see, the packaging is very different than what we are used to in the US. Gone is the styrofoam and aluminum and cardboard. Gone are the ziplock bags. The rice is packaged in leaves to keep it moist. If you were to eat this meal on the go, you'd probably eat it from plates made of leaves too:

From Sustainable Dignity - Corey and Gina in India

These plates are actually made and sold by poor people all over Orissa. They're a great example of a non-timber forest product (NTFP). People can make them from leaves they find in the forest without cutting down trees or doing anything destructive to the environment. They can easily stitch them together and sell them for a little money. And then once they're used, they degrade quickly and easily.