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
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?
Only someone desperate or lucky would take city compost.
The chemicals that might have been sprayed on them can carry through even a good hot compost and affect your plants.
Then again I also don’t trust commercial compost for the same reason.
I have heard too many stories about losing a whole garden.
Agreed, there’s a lot of issues with municipal compost currently. Ensuring cleaner compost output is important for making sure the end product is usable especially for edible crops, but in the meanwhile my understanding is food waste etc produces fewer greenhouse gasses when allowed to decompose via compost rather than in a landfill. Plus using municipal compost has to be better than the farms that are contaminating the soil with PFAS-laden biosolid fertilizer.
I should probably say I make my own because of those fears
You can reuse jars, ideally you would buy new lids, though when my mother or grandmother would make jam they would reuse “good” lids and the jars would seal well - I found a 20 year old reused jar and lid still sealed
Good lids being those where the seal is in good condition
There are very few lid sizes and threads
Obviously I reuse my canning jars, but I still had to go out and purchase my starting stock. At $1.25 a jar it’s not a cheap endeavor to get into.
I live dangerously- I make yogurt in old jam jars!
…Though you only need to go to 180° and don’t need pressurization for it.But I absolutely echo you with that, the fact that you can’t use most glass for this is insane.
And I only use the Baba Maman jars, they’re the only ones resilient enough.
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.
Exactly, there is so much industrial waste before a product makes it to you. Yet everyone focuses on the consumer use which makes it inconvenient for the end user and ignores all the “invisible” waste which would require investment from businesses to fix but would have a far larger effect on the environment. Not being able to get a plastic straw or PE film bag doesn’t really improve anything since the alternatives are worse and in many cases far worse for the environment even when reused.
Which is cheaper, switch out manufacturing processes and change the whole industry, or tell the consumer in a commercial that it’s all on them?
Not really the manufacturing processes, but how individual parts are shipped and protected in transit. But yes, that is my complaint, put all the onus on the consumer without actually making any real improvements because the government isn’t mandating it.
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 expect they’ll move back to earlier packaging materials like glass, metal tins, and waxed paper.
Why do we need the expense of returning glass bottles for washing and reuse, when glass recycling works and is much cheaper?
Washing and reusing is much more environmentally friendly than recycling. It may be more expensive because of the current societal/legal environment but given the right incentives, it doesn’t have to be.
It would be amazing if a standard glass bottle was adopted. That way they can be collected, cleaned and reused by any beverage company.
German beer/water/juice bottles are mostly standardized. There are some massive warts in the system unfortunately: The deposit is legally mandated but the bottles are private standards. Hence breweries/bottling companies are increasingly deviating from the standard bottles for marketing reasons. And there’s a separate single-use flimsy-plastic deposit system used by discount stores which is very effective at collecting bottles for recycling but doesn’t foster reuse.
However, I find it ridiculous that we’re transporting all that water at all even though tap water here is at least as drinkable as the bottled water.
beer
The usual 0.5L beer bottle:
water
A couple of different types here, some 0.7L, some 1L, some glass, some plastic, but all multi-use deposit bottles.
Why do we need the expense of returning glass bottles for washing and reuse, when glass recycling works and is much cheaper?
Consider simply the energy use…
Heating up water to high preassure steam to sterilize bottles uses way less energy than it takes to melt glass, keep it at the correct temperature, reform the bottle, letting it cool slowly (to prevent cracking) and steam clean it before filling the new bottle.
If anything we will see a new focus on the “reuse” part of the “reduce, reuse, recyle” process.
There is a reson as to why the verbs in the process are ordered in that way…
The most environmentally friendly action, is to reduce our consumption of materials, if that is not possible, then we should reuse the finnished product for as long as possible, if that is not possible, then we should recycle the materials into a new and better product rather than digging up more materieal.
I was not under the impression that glass recycling penciled out (as in, it costs more to recycle than make new). My area crushes “recycled” glass and uses it to cover landfills (which is better than having it inside the landfill, but it still leaves the consumer system).
With return policies we don’t need to go through actual recycling methods. I don’t know if growlers are popular in your area but it’s pretty cheap energy-wise to just sanitize a returned jug.
Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle… specifically in that order.
when glass recycling works and is much cheaper?
Glass recycling works but its far more energy intensive. The saying was Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and it was in that order for a reason.
when glass recycling works and is much cheaper
[Citation needed]
As fireweed said, I think it is too energy intensive especially with the contamination issues.
I think it would be interesting if packaging in many areas was standardized to actually useful products, like if products came in aesthetically designed drinking glasses and dinnerware.
I think it might be more effective to ask how this is/was done in other parts of the world presently. I’ve never been outside of North America except for visiting Hawaii once. I’ve seen documentaries about foreign bazaars and know the basic history of the Roman Fora, but I don’t know how this translates to or evolves to meet the needs of Western culture presently and visa versa.
Those aren’t really good either. Even glass, as much as it is better, still needs yo be washed and reused which uses more aggressive chemicals than most would be comfortable with.
Fact is that like everything in life, stuff is a tradeoff. Can we wash and re-use glass without aggressive water harming cleaning fluids? Sure. But that means more danger from it. We could also use degradable plastics but those are problematic as well. Tins are an issue in general plus they can only be used for some foods. Waxed paper is even trickier to recycle than most other things, not durable, and again only suited for some foods.
Ultimately, it’s health vs recyclability. There’s always a tradeoff.
It takes around 70% more energy to melt glass into glass than to melt sand into glass.
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Do we move to more unpackaged goods and bring our own containers to fill at markets?
This used to seem like a good idea to me too, and from what I’ve since learned, it seems all grocery stores used to operate this way. Sergei on the Ushanka Show YouTube channel said Soviet stores ran that way too until the end of that era.
The problem which becomes clear when you think about it, is imagine if you had to wait in the deli counter line for half of your purchases. The store only has so many employees, and everything you want needs to be measured. That’s a ton of time and labor. Do you want to wait in line for any item not sold in a one size only unit?
Swapping used containers (like we do with 20 lb propane tanks, leave an empty or pay extra, take a full) or compostable wrapping like rice paper or waxed paper seem to be the best shot to save time and material.
Unpacked goods tend to have a lower shelf life so can lead to more wastage. It needs a holistic analysis from farm to table to work out the best trade offs for reducing waste.
The co-op supermarket in my city sells cleaning chemicals (shampoo, hand wash, floor cleaner, laundry detergent…) as refills for whatever suitable container you bring
My co-op and WinCo sell olive oil, vinegar, honey, and more as refills in addition to cleaning stuff.
I’ll tell you a story.
The other day I got some curry and rice boxed meals at a local closeout store.
Inside there was curry in one plastic bag, rice in another plastic bag, and a little disposable plastic bowl to combine them in.
But wait, there’s more. They also included a bamboo spoon and fork. About the most useless disposable flatware I’d ever seen. Didn’t work at all b
I don’t know where I was going with this story but your prompt reminded me of it.
Aluminum is pretty great, as is paper for a lot of products
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.
Why does energy have to be scarce?
Anyway, reusing metal and glass containers seems like a straightforward plan.
Barring a major technological breakthrough, all current means of energy generation have significant environmental drawbacks. Even among the “renewable” energy generation there’s problems: hydroelectric destroys river ecosystems, nuclear produces radioactive waste, solar and battery systems require mined materials (and become toxic waste at the end of their lifecycles), wind turbines kill hundreds of thousands of birds and bats annually, etc. Meanwhile rather than solving environmental and climate problems at their sources, we’re relying more heavily on powered solutions, from electric vehicles to de-carbonization systems, while also needing to use more electricity to combat the ill-effects of climate change (e.g. more air conditioning in the face of warming summers). If we’re gonna start turning the boat around on environmental issues we need to dramatically reduce our energy consumption as a society. Instead we’re mining bitcoin and barrelling headfirst into an AI “revolution”…
Nuclear, deep-well geothermal, and concentrated solar are all good, low-impact thermal power options. We should always be improving energy efficiency, but I just don’t see why we have to reduce energy consumption so much that we can’t have reusable metal and glass containers anymore.
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
Go to a grocery store, bring your metal containers to the grocery, get them autoclaved while shopping, and get em filled up with your rice/cereals/juice/etc.
Edit: The below is a bad idea unless new materials are found, see comment thread.
Also, SLA Printing for ceramics is already possible, just expensive for now. Once we figure out how to do that sustainability and in a foodsafe manner, we could just print our single-use cups and dishes from a slurry.
Yeah, finding the gunk from a bone dry ceramic cup left in random places outside would suck, but nature would be able to reclaim it as easy as any random dirt clod. (Well, not as quick in the short term, but when it comes to materials)
One could potentially even just rinse out the clay, stick it in some water, and with some elbow grease and effort, process it into actual, useable ceramics. Depending on the formulation required for the SLA process, of course.
Deposit systems with standardized containers would be my wish. And I wouldn’t mind if some of the standardized containers were made of plastics.
I’d also hope for all sorts of concentrates and powdered drinks to take over. A large portion of the packaging we go through every day is actually for drinks.
Single-use bioplastics and fungi-based materials may also be part of the solution. Bioplastics would ideally be created from byproducts of other processes though.
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.
