When given a new green challenge by Ashley, I have found it a useful exercise to examine why following the given task is a good idea. This week’s green challenge is to reduce the amount of packaging I use and try to eliminate as much packaging as possible. To eliminate packaging completely is pretty much impossible, but it is certainly a worthwhile endeavor to use as little packaging as possible.
In a previous week, and with the help of our NatureMill composter, we worked to reduce the amount of food waste we produce. Besides the food that cannot be used or composted, what else is there that goes into the garbage? Some people put diapers in the garbage. Most of us have paper waste, but hopefully we are trying to recycle what we can. What is left? Packaging.
A good chunk of the packaging in our landfills is Styrofoam. 25% of our landfills are made up of Styrofoam. I am sure part of this 25% is Styrofoam coffee cups (which could generally be avoided), but part of this is the packaging that we send and receive. Everything from the Styrofoam eggshells to molded Styrofoam packaging goes straight into the garbage. This material cannot be disposed of in an eco-friendly way (that I am aware of) and should be avoided.
Besides Styrofoam, which I am learning to be evil, there are other reasons to avoid as much packaging as possible. If Styrofoam takes up 25% of the landfill, I wonder what the percentage is for all packaging waste. Even if you buy a product that uses recycled packaging and you recycle it yourself, it still takes resources to recover that material. Somebody needs to pick up the item in a carbon emitting vehicle, go through an industrial (and likely carbon emitting) process to change the item into whatever, then turn around and transport the item back out to the public. A recycled product is a way BETTER way to consume, but avoiding the waste packaging product altogether is BEST for the environment.
Avoiding packaging will always be better for the environment. I already have some ideas on great ways that we can avoid packaging further and sure I will have a list coming up in the near future. Please let me know any information you have or what you do to reduce your packaging waste in the comments area below.
One trend that I’ve noticed is the use of “air bags” instead of packaging peanuts. Rather than filling a box with hundreds of stryofoam peanuts, one could use a few plastic bags filled with air. Not only do they use less material, but they are recyclable.
This trend isn’t as popular as it could be, I still received the majority of my packages with stryofoam.
Packaging! This has been one of my ‘pet-peeves’ for years! One of our vendors in San Diego, Stone Impressions, has a great solution. They purchased a heavy duty shredder and shred cardboard to use as packing material for shipments of tile. My Stone Impressions friend, Ken, said that they ‘dumpster-dive’ to retrieve cardboard boxes not being recycled properly to have enough materials to shred. The worker-guys love to feed the shredder, too, as it’s a great way to relieve anger, etc.! The shredded cardboard is easily compostable, or recyclable, too. In fact, you could use it as mulch on your garden, if you were really creative, or throw it into your composter to mix with the other organic matter!
Derek, now that you mention it, I have seen more of that kind of packaging and it is certainly more eco-friendly than styrofoam.
Susan, I should go to Stone Impressions to take a tour. I could certainly use a little San Diego weather right now (and I looooove the Mission Bay area)! Although it may not work well for larger companies, a while ago I wrote about junk mail and find that shredded waste to be perfect for packing material. Ideally, I would be able to stop all junk mail, but unfortunately I think that may be impossible to stop completely.
Thanks for the suggestions and comments! Your input and visits are appreciated.
Hi you ‘guys’ – I’m so liking the shredding idea, and just this morning saw an ad from Office Max that they have a shredding service. I’m going to check it out to see what they do with the shredded material – seems like this could be a source for a better packing material for some shippers located close to an Office Max. Here in Silicon Valley (not quite as sunny as San Diego, but almost …), we also have shredding services that shred for big corporations – wonder what they do with their shreds? Hmmm. Methinks I might have stumbled on an interesting cottage business for some enterprising, out-of-work, sustainably minded, someone!
BTW – I love getting your posts each morning! It starts my day thinking.
Susan, thank you so much for the complement. We greatly appreciate it! I would think it could be an interesting proposition to sell shredded paper as packing material. And Silicon Valley would be very sunny for us at this time of the year.
What worries me a lot too is food packaging. You know all that plastic to sell mini quantities of yoghurt, desserts etc. Buy a card board box to find another plastic wrapping inside… We avoid such products by mostly cooking from scratch, buying only the basic ingredients in as large a packaging we have room for to store or we will likely use up fast enough.
By the way to fill my own packets I go for the old-fashioned crumpled up newspaper. Never buying any, but the local ones come for free in my mail box weekly. Hoping the recipients will bring it to the paper recycling collection points.
I make my own strong envelopes from banana box paper.
And for item wrapping I use the non-staining colourful ad folders that equally come (unwanted) for free in my mail box.
For the more delicate wrapping I curb shop: looking for shoe boxes and taking the silky paper from them.