Plastic is evil, but reduces our carbon footprint (sometimes)
Designing for sustainability is more than choosing sustainable materials.
Raw chuck roast lasts 26 days longer in plastic film vacuum packaging than butcher paper.
1/3 of food is thrown to landfills globally. Plastic does help put a dent in that.
Plastic film is lighter weight than paper so it reduces the amount of fuel used in transporting goods. It's also so thin, it allows for more product to be packed and shipped at a time.
Plastic film is usually the cheapest way to ship product, which is the greatest incentive for businesses and why we see so much of it today.
Plastic film is ~$0.75 per pound.
Paper packaging is ~$0.90 per pound.
Yes, all plastic takes 10-1,000 years to decompose. Film takes about 500 years. And plastic can only be recycled 1-10 times, which is resource intensive.
Ultimately, it's true that the most sustainable practice overall is to reduce plastic use across the board.
But today’s use cases of transporting and storing some goods does reduce our carbon footprint compared to not using plastic. Where plastic prevents oxygen from reaching food, goods are stacked more compactly for transport and in reducing fuel consumption.
Replacing gas vehicles with electric ones removes the initiative to use plastic to save on fuel costs. Eating food before it expires puts less pressure on landfills and farms. But for now, in specific scenarios of shipping product, plastic can be the lesser evil.
Want to speed up the path to alternatives? Follow and support the REDUCE Act which would add a fee to greater-evil, single-use plastics by $0.20 per pound for corporations like Amazon. Making it more expensive than paper. This would force executives’ hands to investigate alternatives to plastic and perhaps, indirectly, to gas transportation.
Send a pre-written message to your senator in support of the REDUCE Act.
