Day 10: Birthday pizza boxes, and their little plastic tables

My son had a good start to his 16th birthday, I thought. 

He had some nice presents, that he liked. We were planning to take him out for dinner, and he chose the Hard Rock Cafe. I was also planning to take him out to buy new pyjamas once my ankle had healed enough for walking and driving on.

Around midday, my husband was feeling increasingly ill, and tested positive for Covid.

So that meant an afternoon of getting the kids out of school and going for PCR tests. Not a great birthday activity at all😦

Obviously, going out for dinner was out too, so rather than illegally turn his birthday night out into a super spreader event, we got some special takeaway pizzas and watched a movie called Minari instead.

My husband said later that he couldn't really taste the pizzas thanks to the Covid, but they were great - hot, tasty comfort food, cheaper than a night out, and enough for lunch the next day as well.

It's also good that we live near the cardboard recycling.

But it got me wondering about the little plastic tables they use to hold the lids of the boxes off the pizzas (can't think about Covid all the time after all).

There must be so many of these thrown away every day. Couldn't something else be a more sustainable alternative?

So I've been thinking through a few options.

1) Presumably a wooden version of the table would be too labour intensive

2) A ring of cardboard? Would it look too much like a toilet roll? 

3) How about a triangle? Would it go soggy with grease from the pizza?

4) A U shaped perforation that could be folded down from the lid? Same problem with the cardboard, plus a gap left in the lid that would let the heat out and dust in?

5) A toothpick? Too spiky, might scratch people and wouldn't stop it sliding down.

6) Final idea for now: a dough ball / garlic knot on top of the middle of the pizza. Most pizza places sell these anyway so it would look like a nice little bonus. The question is how to keep it in the middle. Sticking it to the lid would work, but might pull toppings off when the box opens. What if there was a small hole cut out of the middle of the pizza with a dough ball in it, like a record? I think it could work.