The bone dilemma

I went to this restaurant and ordered mee kuah tulang. It came in a large deep bowl. Since it is a "tulang" dish, it came with large chunks of bones (with meat and tendons attached). As I was eating, I faced a dilemma: where do I put the bones after getting the meat off? Usually the table would be a good place, but this place had placemats on their tables. Not just any kind of placemat, but some plastic lace kind. I can't put dirty bones on holey placemats... if it were without holes then I would gladly put the bones on them, because I expect they would clean the placemats after each customer. But in this case, if I were to put the bones on the placemats, I would be dirtying both the placemat and the table. Not a good solution, in my opinion...

I ended up putting the bones on my brother's plate (he ordered nasi lemak). But I wonder, where did the restaurant owner expect us to put the bones anyway? It's not like everyone comes with a companion who orders rice... What would you have done in my place?