What?

Packaging is the most wasteful part of our trash. Packages are not products in their own right, we simply use them to handle the products that we use.

It is useful to recycle this particular type of waste as well as we can, but this is not always possible. Some types of waste exist of layers of materials that are bonded together in such a way that they cannot be separated easily, so they are not prone to reuse as building materials. It would be preferred to replace such materials with alternatives.

It is advisable to choose plastic packaging over tetra pack. And to select potato chips wrapped in paper or plastic only. And not to demand products with a long shelf life, because that is a great motivator for the overkill in packaging. If you pick a tomato in your own garden it doesn't need a triple-layered shrink wrap!

Why?

A simple tea bag consists of the tea itself, a bag, several of these are then boxed and wrapped in plastic foil to protect the tea from getting humad. After that, bulk packaging is applied, and several bulk packages are sealed together on top of a crate. A bizarre amount of packageing for just a few grams of tea needed to brew a nice cup.

A lot of this garbage can be recycled. Tea bags (without staples) can be composted, plastic foil can mostly be recycled (if collected separately) and the same goes for paper and cardboard.

The real problems arise with packages that cannot be split into their constituent components, and which would not deserve a cradle to cradle label. A few examples are tetra packs (a layer of card board, aluminum and plastic), bags for potato chips and milk cartons (card board and plastic).

The central problem of these forms of packaging is that they survive immensely longer than the products that they contain. This is greatly helped by the introduction of bio-degradable packaging plastics based on corn.

The reason that tetra packs exist from several layers is that producers want to sell their products as "absolutely fresh" even though they have been lying on shelves for months. This is mainly to aid in stocking the product; as consumers we could use a bought product quickly if we wanted to. If we open a product it usually turns into a product with a limited shelf life anyway.

The non-separable aspect of tetra packs and bags for potato chips makes it impossible to recycle them properly, en that makes these products highly unsuitable for a sustainable life style. Avoid them whenever you have a choice, and prefer the fresh product.

How?

There are alternatives for the shrink wrapping mania of the massively producing food industry. The bio-degradable plastic bag based on corn is becoming a regular attendant in our supermarkets; it lives only a bit longer than the product it contains. The prints must of course match the sustainable character of the plastic.

Other alternative packages are in the making; In England, work is advancing on a Greenbottle, in the Netherlands research by Friesche Vlag revelead that school milk can be packaged in sustainable packages in an economical fashion. Ecover and Ha-Ra offer refills of their bottles of cleaning aids. In Germany, the market is used to opaque PET bottles as packages for juice.

By deliberately choosing these packages we can do a lot to avoid the piling up of unusable garbage, and instead cause recycling systems to work better. As we become used to recycling our building materials we can refrain more and more from digging up nature's resources for fresh materials and at the same time we avoid stashing unwanted residue which in essence contains those materials.

Where?

• Greenbottle is an environmentally sane plastic bottle, developed in England as a milk container.
• School milk packaging turns out to be suitable for a sustainable alternative without becoming un-economical.
• Ecover and Ha-Ra refill their bottles as long as possible.