Would you buy food that wasn’t packaged?
Unpackaged carrots: Not really that weird, is it? – photo by ecomamanl (source: Flickr Creative Commons)
According to a CNN Eco Solutions report bioplastics are booming. Even the 215,000 square foot (20,000 sq meter) carpet that politicians, activists and scientists trounced upon at the Copenhagen climate summit was made from corn. Carpets are ‘reusable’ however. Disposable packaging – containers, shopping bags, bottles and plastic wrap – is not reusable and in many cases, unnecessary. When these products eventually end up in landfills, the middle of the ocean or even in recycling centers, they are a problem that needs to be dealt with.
Packaging made from bioplastics shows promise in being a good alternative to traditional plastic materials: it is safer, made from renewable resources, is generally more energy efficient and often biodegradable. Recycling has also advanced considerably, becoming more efficient and widespread during the past decade, yet this advancement has coincided with a huge increase in waste production, especially in Western countries. So in fact, rather than reducing our impact on the environment in recent years, as far as packaging goes, recycling and bioplastics have only served to mitigate the growing amount of damage we do. This is obviously not the direct fault of recycling and bioplastics, but rather a symptom of irresponsible runaway profit motives. The fact is that that our rampant consumer-based society simply has not addressed the issue of needless waste.
But it would also seem logical that less waste = more money saved, right?
Pretty and convenient packaging may help to sell products, but so could an eco-friendly image. Lush cosmetics have been very successful in marketing their natural handmade products, which feature very little packaging. 70% of Lush products can be purchased ‘naked’ or with no packaging at all. We’ve all experienced the rage that accompanies trying to open over packaged electronic equipment, as exemplified by Larry David in this clip from ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’:
Larry David vs Plastic Package
London ethical grocer Unpackaged takes the idea of less packaging to its logical conclusion: no packaging. In other words, you bring your own vessels and they fill them with their goods. It may sound radical, daring, modern and brilliant, but it’s largely how things used to be before the advent and mass takeover of plastic, paper and cardboard packaging. It’s ironic – but good – that they’ve been getting so much attention for taking this simple, reasonable, yet completely traditional approach to selling their wares, but that just shows how conditioned we’ve become to over-packaged goods – and in such a short time. Perhaps the plastic packaging era will turn out to be but a small blip on vast millennia of civilization. Unfortunately – even in that best-case scenario – the remnants of that blip will remain in our soil and oceans for thousands of years to come.
by Graham Land
Additional resources:
Reuters video – Recycle! What about precycle?
Beyond recycling – ‘zero waste’
Scary plastic numbers from Discover magazine
Graham Land grew up in Washington, D.C., where he was part of the local hardcore punk scene. Through this unique musical movement he became involved in grass roots anti-racist activism, animal rights and Ecology. Since 2000 Graham has lived in Europe, earning an MA in history from Malmö University in Sweden and working as a musician, English teacher, sports therapist, customer service agent and writer. Graham has a podcast with author Saci Lloyd and is currently pretending to work on his first novel.
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Tags: bioplastics, Larry David, Lush, package, packaged, packaging, plastic, products, Recycling, unpackaged, waste
PR, I might go to that restaurant with my trusty plate I carry around that doubles as a frisbee.
People carried good in their own reusable containers for thousands of years before and still do. We only think it’s weird because we’re postwar children. But you’re right restaurants that just poured your dinner into your lap would be weird. Thankfully they use crockery.
Hmm, innovative? Maybe. Avant-Garde? So done. Idiotic? Definitely. Would you return to a restaurant that served your food in your hands? If so, more power to ya.
Thanks Dinesh. Great stuff!
Graham – Thanks for the tip off Unpackaged. Very cool. On the other side of the planet, in San Francisco, there’s a company doing something similar (albeit with a bit more narrow focus). I run a green purchasing group and we work with a local cleaning products company called Green11 that has a store located in Noe Valley (a neighborhood in SF). They allow local residents to drop by with their empty cleaning products bottles and get them re-filled with biodegradable, non-toxic products. I was hanging out in the store the other week for about an hour and it was very neat to see all the locals dropping in and topping off their empty bottles.