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Packaging - unwrapped
07 April 2007
From New Scientist Print Edition.
Jessica Marshall

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I lost 2 pounds the week I gave up packaging. Among aisles and aisles of neatly wrapped goods almost everything at my local grocery store was off-limits. Only a selection of fruit and vegetables made the grade. For milk I could buy from a local dairy that refills bottles, and I found bread without a bag at a local bakery. That was it: everything else was forbidden - even lettuce, which only came wrapped up. My conscience was clear, but my stomach wouldn't stop rumbling.

A few days later, and facing malnutrition, I fell off the wagon. I cracked open a can of beans from my cupboard, and bought some fish from the local fishmonger, who wrapped it in paper. I had to buy toilet paper, which came wrapped up in plastic, and a light bulb, which I couldn't find without a box. Living packaging-free, I concluded, is pretty much impossible. At least within walking distance of my apartment.

My mission to kick the habit may have been short-lived, but I'm not alone in wanting to try. In the UK, the Women's Institute, outraged by absurdities such as shrink-wrapped coconuts, last year picketed supermarkets, demanding an end to unnecessary packaging. In November, British environment minister Ben Bradshaw encouraged consumers to unwrap their goods at the checkout and leave the resulting pile of paper, card and plastic behind. Packaging is fast becoming public enemy number one.

Given the amount of the stuff that passes through our homes, that's hardly surprising. Each year, US consumers throw out 69 million tonnes of packaging waste, 31 per cent of the total US waste stream. In the UK, 25 per cent of the contents of the average bin is retail packaging.

The packaging industry - worth more than $150 billion a year in the US alone - sees it differently. It maintains that consumers choose to buy products with lots of packaging, even when less-packaged choices are available. Wrapping prevents more waste than it creates, the packagers argue, by ensuring that fewer goods get damaged and then have to be discarded.

So who's right? Is packaging really the bad guy, or would losing it cause more environmental problems than it solved? And what is the time-poor yet green-minded consumer to do when faced with wall-to-wall packaged goods?

One factor behind the packaging explosion is the way goods are mass-produced in one part of the world and shipped to another to be sold. Products need to be boxed, wrapped or bagged in a way that gets them from the farm or factory and into the consumer's home in one piece. If the environmental impact of producing the items that might get damaged on the way is greater than that of the packaging needed to keep them safe, then the wrapping makes environmental sense.

Clearly this ceases to be an issue if we buy from local producers, but even if we do our shopping in supermarkets, can it really be true that packaging saves more waste than it creates? Recent figures are hard to come by but in their 1996 book Food, Energy and Society, David and Marcia Pimentel of Cornell University reported on the energy required to bring certain foods to market. They calculated that the energy costs of packaging a can of sweetcorn represented about one-third of the total energy required for the product - the largest single component by far. So buying corn fresh consumes less energy than buying it canned, even if a proportion of it goes to waste. The Pimentels also reported that producing the fizzy drink inside a 12-ounce (350-millilitre) aluminium can takes about 2065 kilojoules, while the can itself requires a whopping 6690 kJ. So if you are in a bar or a cafeteria, getting your drink delivered on tap into a glass or even a paper cup is going to be a better option. And when you are out and about, plastic bottles are a more energy-efficient form of container than a can. A recent study found that on average even the latest lightweight aluminium cans consume more than three times the energy of plastic bottles for each litre of drink they deliver.

In other examples, though, the Pimentels found that packaging is a minor contributor to the overall energy budget. For example, just 7 per cent of the energy required to put a loaf of bread on the shelves is accounted for by the packaging. Of the 56,400 kJ required to produce a 5-ounce (140-gram) steak, only 2100 kJ goes into the processing, transport, distribution and packaging - the rest is needed to raise the cow. Much of the Pimentels' data on which these calculations were based comes from the late 1970s, when packaging was generally bulkier and heavier than it is now, so some of the packaging used today may be somewhat less energy-hungry than these numbers suggest. Indeed, in the food system overall, Martin Heller and Gregory Keoleian of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, found in a 2000 study that growing, shipping, processing and storing foods each required at least twice as much energy as the packaging, which contributed just 6 per cent of the total energy. However, packaging varies from country to country and store to store and is used on a wider range of goods than it was 30 years ago.

Given that we are not going to get rid of packaging altogether, what kind is going to do least environmental damage? "It's very difficult to say 'this is green and this is not green'," says Helen Lewis, a research consultant with the Sustainable Packaging Alliance, and at the Centre for Design at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. Plastic is light and uses relatively little energy, but it is non-renewable, non-biodegradable, and only some types can easily be recycled. Glass is energy-hungry to make, and even to recycle. Glass containers are also heavier than plastic ones, so shipping them consumes more fuel, but on the plus side they are easier to reuse and refill. Paper is renewable and degradable, but it is bulky to ship, can be energy intensive to produce, and uses environmentally damaging chemicals in its manufacture. Aluminium's environmental performance depends heavily on recycling: it takes a lot of energy to produce in the first place, but recycled aluminium has significantly lower environmental impact. Steel takes less energy to produce, but it's heavier.

"Everything is a trade-off," agrees Anne Johnson of the Sustainable Packaging Coalition (SPC), an industry working group based in Charlottesville, Virginia. Formed in 2003, the SPC is working to help companies minimise the environmental impact of packaging and to establish their priorities - biodegradable, recyclable, made from recycled materials, renewable, low energy requirements, or made with renewable energy. But they admit that what this boils down to is that all types of packaging are environmentally unfriendly in different ways. "There is no such thing as sustainable packaging right now except maybe an egg or a banana," says Johnson.

So can we at least get rid of some of the more obvious packaging excesses, such as shrink-wrapped vegetables? Even that may not be easy. Packaging equipment manufacturer Sealed Air says shrink-wrapped potatoes and horseradish roots have proved to be business success stories, with one client reporting a 15 per cent increase in potato sales when they sold them shrink-wrapped. Consumers apparently like that they can put the clean, wrapped spud straight into the microwave. As smaller households become more common, more consumers want to buy goods in limited quantities - one potato instead of 5 kilograms of them. As for the horseradish roots, the client chose to start shrink-wrapping them because the roots were drying out, reducing the weight per root and therefore reducing profits.

Plastic is often seen as the packaging material everyone loves to hate. There are worries that chemicals may leach out of the plastic and into food. Then, once used, the wrapping from those potatoes and horseradish roots will end up in landfill, where it will lie for hundreds if not thousands of years, along with plastic bottles and plastic bags. But does it really deserve such a bad reputation? "People attack plastics as environmentally unfriendly, which I think is unfair," says Lewis. She and others agree that plastic's light weight and lower production energy requirements can make it a less environmentally damaging choice than glass or paper. As greenhouse gas emissions rise to the top of the environmental agenda, plastic begins to look even better, as anything that reduces total energy demands has to be progress.

So what kind of wrappings should the discerning consumer look for? "Always try to pick refillable packaging," says Marko Hekkert of Utrecht University in the Netherlands, who compared the greenhouse gas emissions of a range of packaging materials. If that's not possible, a pouch is the next best option for liquid products, followed by cardboard cartons, and then a lightweight plastic container. Aluminium and steel cans are a no-no. "Metal is just bad packaging," says Hekkert, who points out that soda is no longer sold in cans in the Netherlands.

"A general rule of thumb is that if you're using less material, you're going to have less environmental impact," says Susan Selke of the School of Packaging at Michigan State University, East Lansing. Meat and fish from the butcher or the chiller cabinet, wrapped in paper or plastic film, is clearly better than the same product in a plastic tray with a cardboard sleeve. And according to Diana Twede, also at MSU's School of Packaging, apples in bags fare much worse in the distribution process than those loose in trays, so buying them loose avoids bruises as well as unnecessary packaging.

There is, however, a way to bypass these kinds of shopping headaches. After my failed attempt to go packaging-free, I got in touch with Reuben Deumling, a graduate student in the Energy and Resources group at the University of California, Berkeley. Deumling and his wife, who now live in Portland, Oregon, weighed and recorded every item that entered and left the house for more than a year. In 2002, they together consumed about 2.5 kilograms of food per day - encompassing nearly 180 different food products over the year. By recycling and composting what they could, they limited the amount sent to landfill over the year to just 4.7 kilograms each. Compare that to the average American, who generates around 0.7 kilograms per day, topping Deumling's annual total in a week.

How does he do it? For starters, he buys produce and eggs at farmers' markets. He also buys bulk food extensively, ordering 20-pound bags of pasta and dry beans through wholesalers. He tries to shop at stores that sell liquids like soy sauce, oil or detergent in bulk, and takes them home in his own reusable containers. "To the extent that it is possible financially and logistically to buy fresh food locally and dry goods in bulk, the category of packaging just sort of disappears," says Deumling. He throws so little away that he has no need for a kerbside garbage service.

Sounds complicated? Deumling says not. "My systems are no less convenient than what other people do," he says, pointing out that having bulk quantities of food on hand means fewer shopping trips. "It's 90 per cent about what you're used to."

For my part, avoiding packaging got a lot easier when I moved to a neighbourhood where the two closest grocery stores have large bulk food sections. My pantry is now stocked with a pretty complete collection of dry foodstuffs bought in bulk, and some liquids, too. I've joined a community-sponsored farm that will deliver vegetables in a reusable box through the growing season. Now that it's convenient, reducing my packaging use has not been so hard. And given the murky mathematics over what packaging options are greenest, opting out seems the only way to really do it right. So if you'll excuse me, I really must start soaking some beans for tomorrow's dinner.

Jessica Marshall is a freelance writer based in St Paul, Minnesota

From issue 2598 of New Scientist magazine, 07 April 2007, page 37-41

Good excuses for bad packaging Is it ever necessary to pack a product in a plastic tray, shrink-wrap it in more plastic and then cover it with a cardboard sleeve? Probably not from an environmentally aware consumer's point of view, but let's face it - manufacturers and stores wouldn't do it if they didn't think it paid off. Shrink-wrapping baby-food jars or bottled water into six-packs, for example, saves labour in stocking the shelves. Shrink sleeves that completely encase plastic bottles allow marketing messages to cover the whole bottle, not just a little label. And luxury items have to look worthy of their price tag compared to the regular option. Fred Hayes of the US Packaging Machinery Manufacturers Institute is quick to defend his industry. He says that what people see as "overpackaged" may not be. "There are a whole bunch of reasons it's like that," he says. For example, those large, inpenetrable plastic clamshells that surround computer accessories guard against theft by making the goods impossible to unpackage and too big to hide under a coat. And following an incident in 1982 in which several people died after Tylenol (paracetamol) capsules were deliberately contaminated with cyanide, US regulations require drug cartons to be tamper-resistant. In the food industry, packages have to survive automated production lines and the shipping process, so they must be strong and stackable. Different materials are needed to tolerate fats and oils, to keep oxygen out, or to provide mechanical strength. Pouches and cardboard cartons used to contain liquids, for instance, have outer and inner plastic layers to prevent moisture seepage, and an aluminium layer to provide the oxygen barrier that prevents spoilage. Given the right incentives, manufacturers can still find ways to build green thinking into their products and process. Germany's "Green Dot" programme, launched in 1991, shifts the responsibility of waste disposal from the public to the manufacturer. Companies pay to license the green dot to put on their products, and this costs different amounts for different materials. These fees fund a recovery programme, which has to meet certain targets for different materials. It seems to work. In 2005, 47 per cent of all plastic waste in Germany was recycled, and 75 per cent was "recovered" in some way, such as being burned for energy. The system not only reduces the amount of packaging manufacturers use - you won't see toothpaste tubes in boxes, for instance - it has led to the expansion of recycling infrastructure, including for plastics such as those used for yogurt containers which are generally considered difficult to recycle. "Last year we saved 1.3 million tonnes of CO2 by recycling," says Norbert Voell of Green Dot Dual System, the Cologne-based company that oversees the scheme. Susan Selke of Michigan State Universiy and Helen Lewis of the Sustainable Packaging Alliance in Melbourne, Australia, support something similar for their own countries. Such systems pass the cost of dealing with the packaging waste to the manufacturer, which better reflects the true cost of the product, Selke says. Versions of Germany's programme have spread to other European countries, thanks to the European Packaging Directive. In the UK by the end of next year 55 per cent of all packaging waste must be recycled, and large companies must take responsiblity for funding recycling schemes. For now, though, it's up to all of us to recycle what we can, and avoid what we can't.

From coffee cup to compost Alternative packaging materials are beginning to make their mark on the supermarket supply chain. The Canadian company Earthcycle, based in Vancouver, has begun selling moulded cardboard-like packages made out of the husks that are a by-product of palm oil production. The packages can be found holding produce such as cherry tomatoes in wholefood grocery stores in North America. Wal-Mart is using the same material in a completely home-compostable package for kiwi fruit, covered in a compostable plastic film made from eucalyptus wood pulp. Bioplastic manufacturer NatureWorks, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is one of a number of companies making a biodegradable plastic called polylactide (PLA) derived from corn. It can be made into rigid containers, film and even fabric. PLA is found in British retail chain Marks & Spencer's sandwich boxes and dessert cups, holding fresh fruit at Wal-Mart, coating disposable coffee cups and in a variety of other products worldwide. NatureWorks says it can't make enough of the stuff to meet demand. Yet even with green packaging, the choices aren't always clear-cut. A 2006 study shows that more energy is sometimes needed to make packaging from PLA than from certain conventional plastics since more material is often needed to make an equivalent product. The material also only degrades under industrial composting conditions, which aren't yet available to many consumers. "If you think using a biodegradable material is going to have big environmental benefits, you're probably going to be rather shocked," says Susan Selke of the School of Packaging at Michigan State University in East Lansing. However, Helen Lewis of the Sustainable Packaging Alliance in Melbourne, Australia, thinks that with proper planning, the situation will improve. "It's really early days," she says. "If we get biodegradable plastics into the right products and we have the right recovery system, it could be amazing."

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