Where should I put this spoon?

Now, before I get too many suggestions for anatomically questionable places to put a spoon, let me give some background on where this question came from. I was on a BC Ferry last weekend, and wanted some yogurt to munch, so I asked my spouse to get some while I watched our stuff. He returned with some yummy yogurt and a spoon - not just a disposable plastic spoon, a real spoon that you put in a dishwasher and use again. Which was great for the eating of the yogurt, but then the question came up: Where should I put this spoon so that someone will take it to the dishwasher, wash it, and put it out to be used again?

This type of question is popping up more often these days. With the idea of reuse really hitting the mainstream, you can often find the more environmentally responsible options. When I go to Starbucks I typically ask for my coffee "for here" which gets me a real live ceramic cup to drink it from. This is wonderful, it makes the drinking more enjoyable, guilt free, and I think the coffee actually tastes better in a ceramic mug too. But then where do you put the empty cup? I do hate leaving debris on the table when I leave - that being akin to littering - but I don't see an easy option of where to put the cup.

It's not as bad as a story I heard from a friend who was on a beach in Portugal with families with babies all around. One mother actually changed her child's diaper, put the dirty diaper on the sand, and then packed everything else up and made to leave. The diaper was still on the sandy beach, so my friend encouraged her to pick up the diaper so it wouldn't still be there when she visited the beach the next time. The mother was pissed-off at the suggestion, but the father had enough sense to look embarrassed and picked up the diaper before leaving. So how often did the mother leave dirty diapers anywhere she happened to be sitting at the time? The poor small human child probably had its excrement dumped freely all over Portugal. The karma of the infant was probably damaged to a point where it would take years to recover. The planet would be cleaner and more sanitary without that child. What was it's mother thinking?

So my spouse did manage to find the right place to put the dirty spoon before we got off the Ferry, but it did take a bit of hunting. And I am still leaving the Starbucks mugs on the tables, but the people working there are pretty good at clearing the tables. Maybe the child will grow up to be a doctor and help mankind. Hopefully the "where should I put this" question will be an easier one to answer as more environmentally sound practices become common place.