Growing food requires investments of water, land, energy, and fuel. Now consider that we throw away 30 to 40 percent of everything we grow. That means we’re not just wasting food, we’re wasting 30 to 40 percent of all the resources we used to grow that food. Think of a little food packaging as a small investment that helps to protect all of the resources that went into producing that item.
The director of the Industry Council for Research on Packaging and the Environment has said, “A telling fact is that ten times more resources—materials, energy and water—are used to make and distribute food than are used to make the packaging to protect it.” So when we waste a food item, we’re wasting 10 times the resources that were used to make its protective packaging.
Plus food is the single most prevalent material in our landfills. When food decomposes, it produces methane, a greenhouse gas 21 times more potent than CO2. Landfills generate 20 percent of all methane emissions, so using plastic packaging to prevent food waste can really help cut our carbon emissions.
It’s true that we can make packaging out of materials other than plastics, namely paper, glass, aluminum and steel. But studies have shown that plastics are often more efficient. Being both strong and lightweight means plastics can ship more product with less packaging material than alternatives. And using less material in the first place results in significant reductions in energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, and waste.
A 2016 study by Trucost (Plastics and Sustainability 5) found that replacing plastic with alternatives in packaging and consumer products could raise environmental costs at least fourfold. Another study 6 showed that replacing plastics with alternatives in packaging would increase the amount of packaging generated in the United States by 55 million tons annually, and would increase energy use and our carbon footprint by 82 percent and 130 percent, respectively. Not much of an improvement, right?
