Think about the foods you usually eat:

How much of these foods come in different types of packaging?

The foods I eat come in all different types of packaging like plastic, bags, paper bags, and many others.

What kind of packaging materials are usually used (styrofoam, cardboard, plastic, bags, boxes, etc.)?

The most common types of packaging materials used are plastic, bags, sometimes boxes for bigger products and when buying in mass. Styrofoam is not that common for us to receive in food but its definitely happened a couple times.

Why do you think that all of these materials were chosen specifically for the products purchased?

It is cheap to make and it is a convenient way to store food but they don’t realize the drawbacks that using these materials brings. It is cost efficient for the sellers and they know that nothing will happen to the container because it is made out of plastic.

How is packaging both positive and negative for the consumer (the person using it)?

Packaging is positive for the consumer because it is convinient to take around with them and its good for sustaining the food in good condition, but the negative is that plastic takes up lots of space and you can not really get rid of it because plastic takes many year to disintegrate.

What happens to these packaging materials once we have eaten the food inside?

We just throw out the packaging and forget about it and think that it will just disappear, but in reality plastic never really disintegrates and it takes many years for it to go away. So while we think that plastic is an easy throw away but it’s actually not.

Where is the packaging waste after one day? One year? One hundred years?

Packaging waste is supposed to be discarded the same year that their product is consumed but in reality a lot of the waste just sticks around and nothing gets done with it, which results in the packaging waste to just sit around.

What happens to the food waste?

Many times people throw out perfectly fine food and that results in a lot of food waste and in the bigger picture we are just wasting food while many countries in the world are in need of food.

Provide 3-4 suggestions for ways that consumers can decrease the amount of waste we create.

Reusable food containers and bags

Ban plastic containers

Don’t buy more goods then you really need.

Make stores have a limit on how much food you can purchase