We had some really great threads last year, with the following four nominated for the Thread of the Year award in this January's Environment Site Awards ceremony.
It doesn't seem here that the food on the shelves at the supermarket is any less packaged than it was 10 years ago. Is that common elsewhere?
The packaging is much more organized for recycling though, but doesn't seem to be as likely to be re-used as it was fourty years ago. Packaging is a large part of the cost of our dinners, could we get by with less plastic, cardboard and styrofoam wrapped around food in stores?
Has anyone an impression of the percentage of recyclable food packaging that actually makes it back into use?
Packaging is a large part of the cost of our dinners
This criticism was levelled at supermarkets more than ten years ago.
The cost for packaging material then was less than 2% of sales.
I wouldn't consider that a large part of the cost of my dinner.
This is from the BBC story that I linked to. Perhaps there is something that explains the different cost figures. The last bit in that about the disposal factor is something that individuals pay for after the food is gone, but would seldom be factored into the cost when buying packaged foods.
Each year an estimated 6.3 million tonnes of packaging comes into British homes, at a cost of £450 to the average family, says the Government-funded Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP). That's what we're paying for all those unwanted wrappings and containers we have to dispose of.
Food isn't the only culprit, but one-sixth of the average household food budget goes on packaging and it makes up a third of our household waste.
food packaging
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