"FoodPackaging" news and stories

He says it's not the driving force in his life, but Michael Jacobson definitely has a thing about opening up a bag of potato chips and discovering it's half-filled with air.

"It's one of those things that annoys so many people, including me," said Jacobson, who is the executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, commonly referred to as the "food police." "There's a law that forbids unwarranted emptiness in boxes that's never enforced."

by Josh Loposer

Would you drink milk from a bag? If you live in Eastern Canada (and you're not lactose intolerant), you've probably been drinking bagged milk for decades. You may even think it's normal...but it's not.

However, that doesn't mean that bagged milk shouldn't be more widespread. The bag o' milk phenomenon isn't limited to Canada by any means. South Africans, Hungarians, Argentinians and the Chinese all embrace the bag; and the UK is currently following suit. Are these nations blazing the eco-packaging trail, or simply clinging to a backwards milk-drinking tradition?

No matter how much we talk about the environment, no matter how many times we're told to decrease our waste, we're inundated with food products. They are practically suffocating with extra or unrecyclable packaging. I write this as someone who not only finds it ridiculous to buy products that result in tons of hard-to-reuse waste the minute you get it home and unpackage it, but also as someone who has a cap on the amount of garbage that's picked up free of charge.

This isn't just an argument for the environment -- the space available to dump garbage continues to be a problem, so why fill it with needless waste? Save it for the garbage that's much harder to prevent. It's a matter of common sense. Do you want to waste space on fleeting convenience, or the garbage that you can't avoid?

The biggest culprit is styrofoam. My god, it's everywhere, and in most cases, highly unnecessary. The saran+styrofoam combo is rampant in grocery stores -- with meats, vegetables, sliced cheeses, mushrooms. Since much of the food doesn't last long in that packaging, like mushrooms and meats, it must be unwrapped and used immediately, or repackaged in something else to maintain freshness or freeze. The styrofoam is left behind -- useless, unrecyclable. And cheese slices -- my god, I've seen four slices of cheese wrapped this way before -- which is particularly infuriating when it's right next to the same cheese on a deli counter that can be sliced on request and slipped inside one small plastic bag.

As with many people these days, I spend a not-insignificant amount of my time thinking about the environment and ways in which I can reduce my impact. I always have an Envirosax or two tucked into my bag, I try not to buy a cup of coffee unless I brought a reusable mug with me and I use my plastic vegetable bags over and over again.

However, I still struggle with the amount of trash I produce. Last night, as I was cleaning up my kitchen, after an evening of cooking dinner, making some muffin-sized quiches for the week's breakfast (something like these), making salads for lunches and cutting and marinating some chuck steak for dinner tonight, I realized that I had filled the garbage can full up. Now, it doesn't help that I live in an urban apartment and haven't figured out a way to compost yet (although I'm working on it), but most of my trash was unrecyclable food packaging. As I tied up the bag, and headed to the trash room, I found myself wishing for a store where it was encouraged to bring as much of your own reusable packaging along with you as possible.

Reading Treehugger this morning, I discovered that such a store does exist, although its in London, too far away from me to make it practical. It is called Unpackaged and sells all of its products loose. You bring your own container or buy a nice-looking reusable one from the store. Now, I know that this sounds like the bulk section at Whole Foods, but in my area, the bulk-buying options are quite limited and they look at you askance if you bring your own jar in when buying quinoa or popping corn. The idea of a store where that practice is encouraged makes me long for one in my own neighborhood.

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To be honest I have no idea what this site is all about; well, I do. It is "wacky" packaging, but why?

Amazing what you can find on the internet! How about Miracle Whiffs "Spreads on Anything" or Kracked Barrel "Wood Splinter Cheese" just the sort of silliness required down the Queens Head on a quiet Monday Bank Holiday. Hold on! I have just spotted Instant Stanka "The Coffee That Takes Your Breath Away!"

Well, it made me laugh.

Pictured is Spitgehetti with Mystery Meatballs "Explosive. Do Not Shake."

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