Food Packaging Materials Comprise 50% Of Municipal Waste

Modern food packaging provides a way to make food safe, reliable, shelf-stable, and clean, however, some food packaging is designed to be single-use and is not recycled.

Photo Insert: Food and food packaging materials make up almost half of all municipal solid waste, as per the EPA.

Instead, the packaging is thrown away and often litters waterways and because so much food packaging (especially plastic) has ended up in waterways, the United Nations has declared the plastic pollution of oceans “a planetary crisis."

This is a problem not only for humanity but for all aquatic life and there are other environmental impacts from food packaging as well, including to our air and soil. While it may be hard to find unpackaged food, opportunities to choose packaging that is less damaging to the environment do exist, FoodPrint wrote for FreshFruitPortal.com.

The packaging of food places the largest demand on the industry, with approximately two-thirds of all the material produced going to package food. Unfortunately, most packaging is designed as single-use and is typically thrown away rather than reused or recycled.

According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), food and food packaging materials make up almost half of all municipal solid waste.

In the US, the major source of feedstocks for plastics production is natural gas, derived either from natural gas processing or from crude oil refining. There are seven types of plastics polymers that account for 70 percent of all plastics production, including polypropylene, polystyrene, polyvinyl chloride, polyethylene terephthalate, and polyethylene, all of which are derived from fossil fuels and are used in food packaging.

Plastics manufacturing is responsible for a significant amount of greenhouse gas emissions in the US — as much as one percent. Other air emissions from plastics production include nitrous oxides, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride.

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