I imagine all plastics will be out of the question. I’m wondering about what ways food packaging might become regulated to upcycling in the domestic or even commercial space. Assuming energy remains a $ scarce $ commodity I don’t imagine recycling glass will be super practical as a replacement. Do we move to more unpackaged goods and bring our own containers to fill at markets? Do we start running two way logistics chains where a more durable glass container is bought and returned to market? How do we achieve a lower energy state of normal in packaging goods?
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Cellulose. Wax paper. Stuff made from seaweed and mushrooms.
This answer isn’t getting enough upvotes
Amen to that. Seaweed food packaging. I know of some people trying to get this accepted at big companies eg airlines. Their kids made a whacky video about plastic’s impact on marine life. Behold: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mT4BVDbXS1Y
The problem that strikes me reading through this thread, and similar conversations about packaging, is that we can do all we want to reduce packaging and plastics at the consumer end, but there’s a huuuuge amount of packaging all the way through the supply chain. From farming supplies, to ingredient packaging, and the packaging used to transport food products to stores. By focussing solely on the consumer end we’re not addressing the whole issue. It’s like the obsession with bamboo toothbrushes and paper / metal straws. They’re consumerist solutions to a problem caused by consumerism.
Speaking of greenwashing I still remember laughing my ass off when I unwrapped a plastic cover for a paper straw, which made it even funnier is that before then, they would wrap plastic straws in paper wrapping, so why they didn’t just use that is completely beyond me.
I remember cheering sarcastically the first time I saw a paper straw actually in a paper wrapping.
But I bet those paper packages of paper straws were bundled into cartons that were wrapped in plastic, and then those were wrapped with other bundles in more plastic. And even if they’re using cardboard boxes as part of that packaging who knows what percentage of that is recycled, or made from recycled waste. Anyone that’s worked in retail knows the incredible amounts of packaging that get binned every day that’s invisible to consumers.
Farming supplies? There is very, very little that we use farming that isn’t stored or transported using reusable containers like trucks, tanks and hopper bins. The most plastic we would use is things like silage tarps or netwrap that get thrown in totes and recycled.
The packaging starts long after it leaves the farm.
Which country are you in? Where I live my food comes from all around the world. Recycling is mostly a Western thing. It doesn’t exist in many of the countries that supply our food. I was just going by the amount of crap I’ve seen in many agricultural areas. Plastic sacks, containers etc.
Canada
So according to this link https://www.ciwm.co.uk/ciwm/knowledge/agricultural-waste.aspx
"Plastic packaging waste from agriculture represents approximately 1.5% of the overall volume of plastic packaging in the waste stream in England. The types of plastic wastes arising can vary and be both bulky and dirty often making the management of these wastes difficult. Around 135,500 tonnes of agricultural plastic waste is produced each year in the UK with;
Approximately 32,000 tonnes being produced from plastic packaging waste; and Approximately 103,500 tonnes being produced from Non-Packaging Plastics (including contamination)."That’s just England. The data is old (2003 I think), and yes 1.5% is not huge, granted, but that’s of total plastic waste, not just from the food chain. A lot of our produce comes from Asia and North Africa where generally there just aren’t the same facilities for recycling, and environmental issues are not as prioritised. It’s great that there’s very little plastic waste in your farming methods, but it’s not the same around the world.
That’s probably an economy of scale thing. On a 5000ac farm, we’ll use hundreds to thousands of liters of every variety of chem and the product is measured in the millions of kg. So using small, non-reusable containers is just a pain in the ass, regardless of the waste it generates.
So all respect due to UK or other countries in Europe, but they’re small potatoes (no pun intended) in the food production scheme, and their waste to end product ratio will be drastically out of whack to the main source of agricultural products like US, Canada, Russia, Australia and Brazil/Argentina. And I know that we aren’t much different in our production methods to those other heavy hitters. So, you’re right, agricultural methods aren’t the same around the world, but when you get into farming at scale, that’s how things are done.
Ok, but we’re getting dragged into a tangential debate about farming when really my point was that we need to look at waste through the whole supply chain, from farming ingredients to getting put on the shelves. I’m sure we could pick apart the contribution of any one part of that chain and debate how significant it is. Together, at all points in the chain, there is plastic waste that the consumer doesn’t see.
(And btw Canada isn’t in the top 20 of global producers, according to the IMF / CIA World Factbook as at 2018; the EU is number 3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture)
Edited to add: this 2022 UN report states that plastics are used extensively in agriculture and goes into how they are used and how they enter soil and water supplies: https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/40403/Plastics_Agriculture.pdf
And this is another UN report on the issue, stating that Asia is the largest user of plastics in agriculture. When China and India are two of the largest agricultural producers, that’s an issue https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/12/1107342
Mostly in Florida citrus, the packaging for pesticides is significant. Jugs for liquids, bags for dry powder. And irrigation drip and emitters are all plastic. Oh and cones for new trees from the nursery, zip ties for the protective cover around the stalk of newly planted trees. Flagging tape, um, there’s probably more.
I’d figure at any scale that they’d be using 500L deposit totes for chem and liquid fert. A lot of the rest of it sounds like equipment. A zip tie for a tree that’s going to produce for 15 years isn’t much in the scheme of things. Now when you see that apple individually wrapped in plastic at the store, that’s the sort of thing that should grind your gears.
Citrus does not have the scale of the big crops like corn and wheat, so big deposit totes. I am close to the industry, pesticides are sold by the jug or pack, packed on pallets, poured into sprayers by hand. I’ve known growers that just throw the waste into giant burn piles. Doesn’t matter, citrus is dying…unless we come up with a solution to citrus greening.
I would love to see increased standardization in the food industry limiting the possible sizes and shapes of containers (such as glass) making them easier to wash and reuse as-is. On the home front, for example, it’s ridiculous that I have to go out and purchase brand-new Mason jars for canning instead of being able to reuse a store-bought salsa jar. But more importantly on the commercially-processed food front, standardization would make reuse easier by ensuring that containers do not have to return all the way to their original company; that way a jar used by a raspberry jam company in the Pacific Northwest bought by a customer in Florida could go to a local orange marmalade company for reuse rather than having to travel all the way back to the PNW.
I think should also start seeing a lot more compostable products. We’re already getting there somewhat with paper replacing plastic in shipping, but more products need to be explicitly labeled as compostable, and more municipalities need dedicated compost pickup and processing facilities. It’s insane that we’ve created a soil-to-landfill pipeline for nutrients.
The idea of a standardized container that is so sexy. Bonus points if it comes in a variety of sizes that perfectly scale and tesselate together.
Like the plastic containers you get from Chinese restaurants?
Aluminum is pretty great, as is paper for a lot of products
I am here to preach of cellophane. It’s not the perfect product right now but if we invest in it, it is fully biodegradable and jus plain cool.
Also, shoutout to PLA. Again not perfect right now but with the right implementation we can start getting rid of a lot of waste.
Make the packaging edible while also not having it be destroyed by what’s inside in the process.
We’re not technologically advanced enough to do that yet, but I feel like this could be a delicious solution.
I like that idea too
At the end of the day I think the answer is less availability and more local production is the way to go. Heavy sustainable packaging uses to much fuel. So it is better if we can grow and produce locally so we can theny recycle locally back to the packers and producers.
We can grow anything indoors now. We can bottle anything locally. The larger issue is electronics. Which can use sustainable materials.
I wish we could tax corporations for trash produced. Have the dump sort trash by company and offer them to recycle and charge them to recycle or trash the items.
Plastics. I think your assumption’s incorrect. We’re going to keep using plastic.
Unfortunately, it will get less effective, because organisms will evolve to eat it.
the price difference and, well, its plasticity is unparalleled
nothing else comes even close within several orders of magnitude. the other options listed ITT are complete jokes. you think goods are expensive now because of a few points of inflation? imagine paying a few dollars extra for thick and heavy glass bottles for everything or fancy custom made seaweed mushroom compounds instead of medical grade sterile plastic wrap that costs 2c per football field
Non-plastic alternatives would also cause much more food spoilage which would also lead to increased food prices. Most people don’t understand just how incredible plastic is as food packaging.
I think we can only ever reduce the amount of plastic because literally almost everything is contained with some plastic. Even aluminum and steel cans are lined with plastic. Even paper packaging is lined with plastic. Personally I don’t think we can reasonably eliminate it entirely.
