Asklemmy

43899 readers

918 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

161

How do we package food products sustainably in coming decades? (lemmy.world)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

101 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 42 points 7 months ago (14 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

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.

load more comments (12 replies)