Plastic vs food waste
There's sometimes a tradeoff between food waste and plastic packaging waste. discussion Maybe this page should be renamed to Packaging vs food waste to make it more general?
Examples
- Frozen vegetables (more packaging) vs fresh vegetables (more perishing)
- Individually portioned meals (more packaging per unit of food) vs large economic size (more likely to not finish all of it in time)
- ↑ Large format is probably more eco-friendly in this case, if you can make the effort to finish everything in time.
- At a restaurant or event: taking home leftover food "to go"
- ↑ Taking it "to go" is almost always better than letting the food go to waste, even if some extra packaging is involved. But if you can find a way to avoid both, then that's even better. Don't listen to peer pressure to leave before you're done eating everything.
Seeking a fair comparison
Popular eco-influencers have been focusing a lot on eliminating packaging and avoiding "processed" foods. But a perishable diet could potentially lead to more food waste overall, if people aren't careful. There needs to be more awareness and effort to avoid this.
Some things to note:
- Food waste is a major contributor to deforestation.
- Plastic is made from fossil fuels, but most packaging is fairly lightweight - more fossil fuels are burned just by shipping the food (even in a "local farmers' market" scenario).
- Plastic pollutes the oceans and other ecosystems, but maybe this depends on how it's disposed of? To what extent does throwing plastic in a regular garbage bin contribute to this? [RESEARCH needed] discussion Maybe move this question to the plastic pollution page?
Research needed: Math:
- Wasting a kilogram of plastic is equivalent to wasting how many kilograms of food, all things considered?
- Obviously this is a complex question that requires weighing a lot of different factors, and making somewhat arbitrary considerations. But we should at least try. Making a few rough estimates is better than having no answer at all.
What to do about it
- Make use of food before it goes bad discussion I also want to add another point - that you can force yourself to finish what's on your plate - why you shouldn't worry about overeating (because you can just eat less later or delay your next meal - see also intermittent fasting). I know this is a touchy subject and I'm still working on how to phrase it in a non-patronizing way.
- There are some non-perishable foods that have a low packaging-to-food ratio. For example: Dried pasta, dried beans, flour, seasonings
(...)( even though the ratio isn't great with spices, they're used in smaller quantities than other ingredients, so they don't contribute as much to overall plastic waste. I added this here because the other ingredients are pretty bland otherwise ) .