The Facts about Food Packaging

Food Packaging – How much is too much?

There’s no doubt that food packaging is a necessary part of food production. Imagine going into the supermarket and buying soup, with no can, tin, bottle or bag! In order to transport our food home we need some form of packaging. The problem comes when the packaging is excessive. There are plenty of examples of products that seem to have excessive packaging; here are a few of the worst culprits to have caught my eye;

• Tea bags – Essentially, the consumer only wants the tea leaves themselves. Yet so much tea comes packaged in a tea bag, surrounded by a paper sleeve, stored within a card box and bound with a plastic lining. That’s four layers of packaging for the tea leaves. Can we not buy loose tea leaves in one bag and use a tea strainer?
• Water bottles – It’s only the water that’s needed, yet it comes in plastic bottles wrapped in plastic. How about a water filter, then we’re able to use the tap at home. Not only are they extremely cost effective, so will save you money, but you’ll also save having to carry heavy bottles back from the supermarket each time.
• Fruit and vegetables wrapped in plastic and sitting on a polystyrene tray. These can easily be left loose and consumers can use thin plastic bags to put their own fruit and vegetables into, there’s no need for the polystyrene tray.

These are just a few general examples of the excessive packaging that seems to be creeping into supermarkets. I must also add a couple of examples that I have found through my own experiences.

• In a certain supermarket in Marbella they have parmesan cheese wrapped in a plastic film (which has the bar code on it). Fine so far! But then they put this onto a polystyrene tray and then cover the whole thing in another layer of plastic.
• In the same supermarket, you have to get your vegetables weighed before going to the checkout. I took a whole butternut squash over to the weighing desk, where the girl put it in a plastic bag and stuck the price sticker to the bag. I said I didn’t need the plastic bag and she could just put the sticker on the butternut squash, but she insisted she had to put it in a bag as well!

The problem

• It is estimated that each year around 6.3 million tonnes of packaging is taken home along with food shopping in the UK. This accounts for roughly one sixth of each person’s food budget.
• Although up to 70% of this food packaging could potentially be recycled, the fact is that only about 30% is actually recycled. The rest ends up in landfill sites.
• The situation is no better in the US, it is estimated that they discard 250 million plastic bottles every hour!
• The global food packaging industry is worth $100 billion a year and is growing by up to 10% a year. Anything from 10% – 50% of the cost of food can be due to the packaging.
• 11% of household waste in the UK is plastic, 40% of which comes from the 15million plastic bottles we use every day.

Food packaging has a number of roles to play; it protects the food from outside contamination and ensures hygiene is maintained. Packaging can help to prolong the shelf life of certain foods. It also allows food to be transported safely without damage and often provides consumers with information about the foods nutritional value and other legal requirements.

Food packaging has increased in recent years for a number of reasons; food is transported further than ever before and therefore requires more packaging as protection. There has been a rise in the number of ready meals sold; these tend to need larger amounts of packaging. Many foods are sold in smaller portions than in previous years meaning even more packaging.

Plastic bags

Plastic bags seem to have been singled out as the main culprit in the battle against food packaging. It is estimated that between 500 billion – 1 trillion plastic bags are produced every year, that’s one million plastic bags every minute. There is growing pressure to reduce the number of plastic bags in use, and other countries have successfully done so. In 2001, Ireland introduced a tax on plastic bags; in the 2 years to follow they reduced the number of plastic bags by 90%. Bangladesh has taken an even harder line, totally banning plastic bags altogether. There is an argument that plastic bags are a necessary part of shopping, that they are required for us to transport our shopping home. Yet surely, with a bit of planning and a change in attitude, everyone could take their own environmentally friendly bags with them to the supermarket.

What can you actually do to reduce food packaging?

• Buy fruit and vegetables loose or in paper bags
• Take bags with you to the supermarket
• Choose larger sizes rather than individually packaged portions. Buy a single larger size container of yoghurt rather than 6 small tubs
• Look for biodegradable packaging, such as cardboard or cornstarch-based containers and buy these instead of alternatives wrapped in bulky plastic or polystyrene
• Always choose the least packaged option. As with every business, they provide what the consumer demands, so if consumers do not buy heavily packaged foods, the supermarkets will not stock them.