In todays society, the waste from food leftovers and its packaging is often overlooked or ignored. We don’t pay attention to how much waste we actually produce. Food we eat daily including junk food like chips, cans of pop, and individually wrapped candies – and also healthier stuff like eggs in a carton, and milk, all come in packaging. Almost all food sold at supermarkets contain even the slightest bit of packaging, from a small sticker to almost an excessive amount of plastic and cardboard. It is very rare that you will find something with zero packaging.

Foods I eat often like chips and granola bars a usually individually wrapped in a mixture of plastic and aluminum which can not be recycled. Cartons of eggs are usually made of Styrofoam (which is horrible for the environment), or cardboard. The bigger “flats” of eggs are also sometimes sealed in plastic as well. Most packaging you will see instore consists of plastic. Plastic is one of the worst things out there for the environment.  About 40% of food packaging is plastic. This is for good reason to, plastic is cheap, easily mouldable, pretty durable, and lightweight making it the perfect packaging for candies, bread loaves, water bottles, and many more. Aluminum is also often used in packaging because of its ability to keep out sunlight, oxygen, moisture, and bacteria (which is why you will see it on the inside of ship bags, while the outside is usually plastic to create the design). Styrofoam, another big part of packaging, is commonly found in the cartons of eggs because of its ability to slightly protect the eggs from cracking. Most packaging for foods is determined by cost and effectiveness.

Packaging can be both positive and negative to the consumer in a few ways. Packaging like plastic wraps around products keeps others from touching and contaminating food they don’t plan on buying. Some packaging is also there to keep products fresher longer for the consumer. A few downsides to packaging includes false advertising/making a product look fuller than it actually is. By not fully filling the packaging, it looks like there is more food in a box of pasta for example, then there actually is.

So what happens to the packaging after you dispose of it? Recyclables like cardboard, some types of aluminum and a few types of plastics are recycled or decomposed. It takes roughly 6-8 months for cardboard to decompose. Aluminum and SOME plastics are melted into something new. On the other hand Styrofoam and the other types of non recyclable plastics end up in landfills or even the ocean. When in the ocean, turtles and other sea creatures often mistake plastic for jellyfish of food, eating the toxic plastic and choking. Styrofoam, when heated, releases toxic chemicals into the air contaminating landfills and hurting the ozone layer. It takes plastic roughly 450 years to decompose and Styrofoam over 500 years!

Food waste is also a big issue. Along with the packaging of food, the uneaten food is also a problem. Most leftover or thrown out food ends up in landfills rotting, which releases methane into the atmosphere.  In Canada over 2.2 tonnes of perfectly edible food is wasted each year.

If you want to help the planet and limit your waste here are a few ways to do so:

1. Don’t over purchase more food than you intend on eating to limit your food waste. Or if you do, save leftovers and eat them at a different time.
2. Shop at local markets/farmers markets. Local vendors tend to use less single use packaging
3. Use a reusable water bottle instead of using plastic one