Why Use Packaging in the First Place?

When I’m at the grocery store check-out till, I often wonder about the courageous customers that place their unprotected lettuce, tomatoes, or apples on the conveyor belt where hundreds of other items, including meats, poultry and fish, and sticky bakery items or dusty cans have already been transferred that day. What’s more, the cashier needs to touch every item and handle the cash in-between. Of course, we have the option of bringing our own reusable produce bags. Either way, it does beg a discussion about the benefits of packaging.

In our business, we come across many individuals that ask us the question, “Why use packaging in the first place?” There is great concern about packaging adding significantly to the overflowing landfills. And it’s true. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) 2008 report, “Containers and packaging made up the largest portion of municipal solid waste generated in 2007: 31 percent or 78 million tons.”

Fresh produce packaged in Earthcycle

But let’s face it, when it comes to food packaging in particular, our convenience-driven and health conscious society with a growing affinity for portion-sized pre-packaged food cannot and maybe should not do without it. In particular with the recent panic surrounding the H1N1 virus, you want to know your food is wrapped safely from any possible contaminants and from pathogens in the air when it’s displayed in grocery stores.

And let’s not forget, packaging will protect from germs that can transfer from shoppers picking over the produce. Then there’s the damage to consider. In bulk displays, retailers are throwing away anywhere from 15 to 18 percent of produce due to it being picked over and damaged. With packaging, there is only five to eight percent waste at most.

So packaging is not only helpful for our health, but it also assists the retailer with maintenance of product integrity at store shelves and decreases the amount of fresh produce waste that will otherwise end up in landfills. James McWilliams discusses these issues in more detail in his recent New York Times article, “How About Them (Wrapped) Apples?” It is a worthwhile read.

This still leaves us with the overflowing landfills and waterways contaminated by packaging. But there are many packaging alternatives now available, including PLA and agricultural fiber options which are cost competitive with traditional plastics such as PET. Earthcycle is one of them. When we first conceptualized Earthcycle Packaging in 2004, we took the various issues discussed above among many more into consideration and believe that the benefits of packaging in the produce industry far outweigh the negatives.

In this day and age, we do not necessarily have to do without. We have the knowledge and understanding to leverage the design brilliance of nature to come up with the type of products that we have come to depend on without creating more waste or environmental harm in the meantime.

Our Earthcycle packaging, for example, follows the cycle of nature. Our product life cycle starts with a natural renewable resource, palm fiber, from which we mould certified home compostable packaging. Once the packaging has done its job protecting our food, it can be thrown into any compost and will break down within 90 days, returning to the earth as humus and creating valuable nutrients for the soil.