Consider Packaging for Savings at Landfill and Check Out Register

One dollar of every ten-dollar purchase goes to the cost of packaging, and package waste accounts for more than half the trash in the U.S. These days, clever packaging can influence a purchasing decision and can be an important component in building brand recognition.

The purpose of packaging is to prevent damage and provide important information to the consumer about ingredients, usage, manufacturer and country of origin. Unfortunately, the ongoing quest to find new ways to safeguard food and transport products has become a slippery slope on the road to overload.

Smart shoppers know that packaging can add as much as 45 percent to the cost of a product. Shrink-wrapped, pre-cut produce on a plastic tray is twice as costly. Choosing popular prepackaged salad mixes can take a bite out of your food budget while adding to the avalanche of unnecessary package waste clogging our landfills.

Savvy shoppers choose the least packaged products available; a strategy that is both cost effective and practical.

1) Avoid trendy little water bottles. Those ubiquitous water bottles contribute heavily to the glut of practically indestructible plastic polluting the planet. Invest in a water filtration system and durable metal type sports bottles instead.

2) Buy food staples in bulk. Natural food stores and coops stock bulk bins with varieties of rice, lentils, dried beans, fruit, nuts, seeds, and cereals. Buying in bulk is economical and convenient, allowing you to buy in exactly the amount you prefer.

3) Buy fabric softener and detergent and in “ultra” or concentrated strengths. Smaller containers mean fewer for the product itself and in shipping. Toothpaste packaged in conventional tubes produces 70 percent less waste than the pump-type toothpaste container. And you get almost two ounces more toothpaste in the tube then the pump.

4) Choose reusable totes to carry groceries instead of paper or plastic, to reduce waste and the toxic pollutants emitted in the manufacture of plastic bags, save trees, and avoid dependence on foreign suppliers of petroleum. www.chicobag.com

5) Breastfeed your babies! Mother’s milk comes in the best packaging of all and human milk straight from the breast is always sterile.

Breast-fed babies are less prone to childhood ailments, and don’t require all the unnecessary packaging and accessories associated with bottle-fed babies (click here to learn more). Commercial baby formula costs over $1,000 in the first year. Nurse your baby and you will be giving away at least 1,100 calories a day, and that means you will get back in shape a lot sooner… and it’s free! Click here for some tips on effective breastfeeding.

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Polystyrene is the practically indestructible material used in packing peanuts, foam cups, egg cartons and produce trays.

Like all traditional plastics, polystyrene is made from petroleum and is a non-sustainable source of major pollution. It is ubiquitous, difficult to recycle, does not biodegrade and resists photosynthesis¹.  In a stunning development, a new study has shown that polystyrene not only dissolves in biodiesel fuel, it increases the power output in the process.

Scientists found that polystyrene packing peanuts dissolved in biodiesel can actually boost the power output of the fuel and get rid of garbage at the same time.

Styrofoam™ is a generic term for disposable plates, cups and coolers. Dow Chemical Company trademarked Styrofoam™, a form of polystyrene foam insulation in the 1950s. Styrofoam™, made from extruded polystyrene, is used in building materials, floral and craft products and is mostly blue.

That coffee you drank from a white foam cup this morning was not Styrofoam™; it was polystyrene foam, made from expanded polystyrene beads.

In the recent study, published in the journal, Energy and Fuels², researchers Najeeb Kuzhiyil and Song-Charng Kong of Iowa State University stated that polystyrene accounts for about 22 percent of all high-volume plastics.

Finding a method to convert waste plastics into energy could potentially ease the strain on landfills and generate electricity. Although polystyrene does not break down easily in petroleum-based diesel, it does break down almost instantly in biodiesel.

The study, funded in part by the Department of Defense, was conducted to investigate solutions to trash disposal and power generation under battlefield conditions. According to Song-Charng Kong, a mechanical engineer and co-author of the study, “One can recycle any kind of plastic, but if you are camped in a remote area, recycling is not an option.” Kong adds, “a polystyrene cup will dissolve almost instantly in biodiesel, like a snowflake in water.”

For most materials, recycling is more efficient than converting into energy, however polystyrene is both lightweight and bulky, making it less than economical to ship to recycling facilities and a good candidate for fuel conversion.

The study showed that polystyrene dissolved in biodiesel increases its viscosity, building pressure inside the fuel injector causing fuel to be injected sooner into the engine. This increases the overall output.
Biodiesel is a bio-renewable fuel and a good solvent for certain materials.

The downside is that dissolving polystyrene in biodiesel doesn’t eliminate the problem of harmful emissions. The research team found that adding polystyrene increases the fuel’s emissions of carbon monoxide, soot, and nitrous oxides, which don’t burn completely in the engine.

This is not entirely surprising since polystyrene is derived from petroleum in the first place. However the researchers continue to work on improving the engine’s fuel injection system to achieve a more complete burn with fewer emissions.

Dissolving polystyrene in biodiesel as a means to recover energy from waste plastics brings the idea of fueling a car with waste a step closer. Certainly preferable to land filling this exciting discovery could offer a viable solution to the polystyrene waste problem, if the emissions can be brought into line.

1. Bandyopadhyay, Abhijit; Chandra Basak, G. “Studies on photocatalytic degradation of polystyrene”, Materials Science and Technology 23 (3): 307–317 (2007)
2. Najeeb Kuzhiyil and Song-Charng Kong. “Energy Recovery from Waste Plastics by Using Blends of Biodiesel and Polystyrene in Diesel Engines.” J Energy and Fuels. April 21, 2009

Electronic waste (ewaste) constitutes 2 to 5 percent of the solid waste stream in the U.S. and government researchers estimate that three-quarters of all computers ever sold in this country are still awaiting disposal. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the United States generates more e-waste than any other nation in the world.

On a recent edition of 60 Minutes, Allen Hershkowitz, senior scientist and authority on waste management at the Natural Resources Defense Council, declared that ewaste is the fastest-growing component of the municipal waste stream worldwide. “We throw out about 130,000 computers every day in the United States” (1).

Many consumers are unaware of the level of toxic materials used to make the products they rely on for word processing, data management, Internet access and electronic games. Mountains of discarded electronics often end up in landfills or incinerators and the toxic substances commonly used in these products, such as lead, cadmium and mercury can contaminate land, water and air.

Some of that waste is recycled. Steel, aluminum and copper are often stripped from outdated machines and reused in newer models.  However, even recycled parts come at a price. An estimated 50 to 80 percent of e-waste collected in the United States for recycling is exported to areas such as China, India or Pakistan, where workers dismantling the old machines handle toxic chemicals that can pose serious health problems.

In November, the EPA fined electronics recycler Jet Ocean Technology of Chino, California over $10,000 for illegally exporting cathode-ray tubes from old television sets to China. Jet Ocean is only the second electronics recycler to be penalized for shipping and deliberately mislabeling the tubes, which contain brain-damaging metal lead. Jet Ocean Technology falsely labeled the cargo “mixed metal scrap” when shipped out, and as “scrap metal” when China, after being warned by Greenpeace, refused to accept delivery (2).

The Basel Action Network (BAN) is a non-profit organization that opposes the disproportionate and unsustainable dumping of the world’s toxic waste on developing countries. BAN confronts issues of environmental justice, working to ban the global waste trade and actively promotes green and toxic free design of consumer products.
BAN has produced two groundbreaking films:

Exporting Harm: The High Tech Trashing of Asia, a hard-hitting documentary on the dumping of toxic computer wastes in China that continues to open peoples’ eyes to the true horror of the high-tech revolution.

Digital Dump: Exporting Re-Use and Abuse to Africa, which exposes the ugly underbelly of the escalating global trade in toxic discarded computers and other e-scrap collected in North America and Europe exported to developing countries by waste brokers and some recyclers.

Sources:

1. Following The Trail Of Toxic E-Waste. 60 Minutes Follows America’s Toxic Electronic Waste As It Is Illegally Shipped To Become China’s Dirty Secret

2. Scientific American, November 19, 2008. Technology. Not in My Backyard: Stopping Illegal Export of Junked Televisions and Computers

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