Thinking of the food I eat daily, they almost all come from packaging. The kinds of packaging are often plastic bags but occasionally there’s cardboard, Styrofoam and boxes.

The materials that are chosen are what they are because I think it’s what works with the items. It doesn’t make sense to put chips in Styrofoam but putting them in plastic bags does make sense.

I also think plastic bags are the cheapest thing to use out of all the materials. Plastic bags are the most durable, they’re waterproof, they don’t usually rip and they are the cheapest. Companies don’t care about the environment enough to make more executed and environmentally safe decisions.

Packaging can be negative to the consumer because it becomes their responsibility and their job to clean up and hopefully do the right thing with the packaging. It can be positive because it’s much easier to have things put in packaging then to simply have the food items given to them in nothing.

Once we have eaten out food, the packaging is supposed to be recycled based on what type of material was used. I personally think that more times than not, packaging is put directly into the garbage can. Sometimes, that is where it is supposed to be, but it usually isn’t.

Packaging makes its way into a landfill, if it was not properly recycled to begin with, then that piece of packaging could stay there for however long it takes to decompose or burn into the atmosphere. It could easily take up to 100 years but it varies.

Food waste is hopefully put into the compost and then it is composted. If it’s not recycled properly it does the same thing as the packaging until it decomposes on its own.

To decrease the amount of waste we make we could make sure we’re always recycling correctly. You could try and not waste as much packaging you use like reusing it for your own things and finding ways to make sure nothing goes for granted.