Written By: Peter Brecht
Edited By: Morgan Pankarican
Designed By: Jiya Mehta
Published By: Maryam Khan
The world is full of unnecessary packaging, whether Amazon or Hello Fresh, the world has too much packaging. Now let’s clarify what I mean by unnecessary. I’m talking about the double-packaged products and the packaging just for branding. For example, the bag of cereal within the box or the bags of salad that contain five more bags with each ingredient, or every single retail store handing you a bag for free instead of encouraging shoppers to bring their reusable bags.
Examples:
Many companies blatantly don’t care about the waste their packaging causes. To start companies often use large shipping boxes. Then there is the immense waste of resources on the plastic packaging on small Halloween candies. Large bags or boxes of hundreds of individually wrapped candies are extremely wasteful. I do understand the need for safety in Halloween candy specifically. But there are countless other occurrences of unnecessary, wasteful packaging. Such examples include granola bars, milk bags, boxed cereal and even more items that all are at least double packaged.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch
A mass of garbage has accumulated in the middle of the Pacific Ocean due to Ocean currents. This patch of garbage is 1.6 million square kilometres. That is twice the size of Texas and three times the size of France. It weighs a whopping 87,000 tons, nearly twice as heavy as the Titanic, and it is made up of 3.6 trillion pieces of plastic and continues to grow. This garbage patch is colossally huge and freely floating in the Pacific Ocean. It was discovered in 1997, 25 years ago. Although we have known about this patch for 25 years, there have been no limits put on plastic and packaging production among companies. This garbage patch is continuously fed by the overproduction and overpackaging of products.
Paper Straws
Now, I want to start this section by saying I am in no way against what paper straws stand for. I love the movement to clean up the environment and seeing companies take it on. However, I want to say that simply changing from plastic to paper straws is in no way saving the environment. Places like Tim Hortons have switched entirely to paper straws, yet continue to put their drinks in plastic cups. Companies that do this are only making the change for the benefits coming from improved public relations and perceived care of the environment. However, they are not truly helping the environment. Paper straws not only disintegrate when you try to drink from them but are nothing more than a flashy bandaid on a hole twice the size of Texas.
Solutions
Ideally, these wasteful companies would redesign their packaging to be more eco-friendly. Realistically, this is unlikely to happen but it is still crucial to pressure companies to make changes. One way to take matters into your own hands is by shopping at stores such as Zero Waste Bulk. Zero Waste Bulk is a store in which customers bring in their own reusable containers and then fill them up and purchase their items. This allows customers to purchase the exact amount of products they desire and do it without packaging waste. Unfortunately, Zero Waste Bulk has permanently closed due to a lack of customers, showcasing that us consumers aren’t committed to shopping sustainably and decreasing their wasteful packaging. Another option of how to reduce our plastic waste is to begin bringing reusable bags to retail stores. This has become a very large thing in grocery stores but for some reason still isn’t in retail stores. This will help stores phase out handing out plastic bags to every customer.
Sources
https://facts.net/great-pacific-garbage-patch-facts/