Maddi Frith 

September 26th, 2020 

Consumable Waste Assignment 

 

Everyone eats many different things throughout the day, such as breakfast foods, lunch foods, dinner foods, deserts, snacks, etc. But for me, I usually don’t eat desert and sometimes I’m in such a rush I forget to eat breakfast! But, on a regular day I will wake up, go to the kitchen and eat a piece of toast with peanut butter and slices of banana on top before I get ready for school.  

So, the first part of that meal is my bread. Bread comes in plastic bags, but when it gets transported, they carry it in large Styrofoam boxes to the store, then the employees unpack the bags of bread on to the shelves. One way we could make less waste with the materials, is to maybe put two loaves of bread into each bag and just make the bags slightly bigger instead of just a bunch of smaller individual ones. Another way is perhaps using cardboard instead of Styrofoam, because cardboard decomposes, whereas the Styrofoam is in the world for around 100 years.  

The next part of that meal is the peanut butter I spread on my toast. Peanut butter is put into plastic containers then transported in cardboard boxes. To produce less waste, they would put the peanut butter into glass containers instead of plastic ones because glass is more reusable. (I’m not sure if that would make a difference though.) They could try putting it into smaller containers, so people don’t buy as much of it at once. 

The last part of my meal are the slices of banana I put on top. The top three countries that farm and transport the bananas are Ecuador, Guatemala, and Costa Rica, but many other countries closer to us grow them as well. All the bananas are hand-picked, so that’s great for our environment, and after that the quality control looks at them and then they are sent onto ships to be transported. Once the bananas are in the country they’ll be eaten in, quality control looks at them again and then they are put into cardboard boxes and sent to the store. I can’t think of anything that I would change when it comes to packaging the bananas since they don’t need to be in any kind of container. Not packaging the bananas is not the best for the consumer because of covid and everyone looking at the bananas, but on a regular day the downside is that they could bruised or damaged. Once we’re done with bananas the peel goes into the green waste and then it decomposes, which is the best outcome possible. 

This is only one of my meals throughout the day, but in the end, I think this is a great breakfast and out of those three foods, bananas are the best for our environment