Okay, so maybe foam peanuts and the other demons in the legion of packaging materials are not the creations of some sinister mad hatter, some oily oligarch, some short-sighted sorcerer’s apprentice, some wizard hiding in a city that is decidedly not emerald green. Nevertheless, the foam peanuts are steadily spreading with every package sent by air, sea, or ground. And this fact begs the question: Can they be stopped???

Take heart, my fellow Earthlings, for we do have an easy and eco-friendly way to say “YES!” to this question: Bubbla.

Although it may not have the name of a saving knight in shining green armor, Bubbla offers just about anyone–from large businesses shipping countless packages per day to the lone house dweller sending birthday gifts to family–a way to put a stop to the rampaging horde of foam peanuts. (Besides, how silly does “foam peanuts” sound?!)

Bubbla is an “on-demand” air-inflated packaging system produced for over 12 years now by Bubbla, Inc., a company in Canoga Park, California. (Believe it or not, the owner of Bubbla actually invented air-pillow packaging material, and the company owns four patents in this area. Obviously they know their stuff!)

Whenever you need some packaging material, you just make it using either the tabletop or freestanding Bubbla machine, both of which are easy to operate (with touch-screen controls), small (about 25” tall by 15” deep), and can be plugged in to a good old electric wall outlet. The machine quickly cranks out a supply of air-inflated packaging in one design or another (e.g., diamond wrap or long cells) to meet your demand. Make as much as you need, when you need. No fuss, no muss.

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I really love milk, so I was very happy to hear about this new great idea that is coming from the UK: a milk bottle that is made mainly of recycled paper and can be recycled again. In one word: Greenbottle.

Greenbottle (http://www.greenbottle.com) has developed a much greener solution which can replace plastic milk bottles. The outer shell is made from recycled paper which can then be further recycled, or if left it will just decompose within a matter of weeks. The inner liner, which takes up less than 0.5% of the space of a plastic bottle if dumped in a landfill, prevents liquid from contaminating the paper outer.

The GreenBottle, according to their website, consumes about a third of the energy required to make a plastic bottle and has a carbon footprint that is 48% lower than plastic.

The Telegraph reported last month that Asda, the big supermarkets chain, is stocking its Lowestoft store in Suffolk with the Greenbottle after a successful trial in a move that could herald the demise of the plastic bottle. According to the article the supermarket chain hopes to agree a roll-out of the packaging to stores across the east of England, with the potential to take it nationwide further down the line. Sounds like great news to all the UK green milk lovers!

Just to give you an idea what this bottle can save - according to the article, Britons drink around 180 million pints of milk every week, of which around two-thirds is bought in plastic bottles.More than 100,000 tons end up in landfill each year - equal to 260 jumbo jets. They take 500 years to decompose.

One last fact that made me fall in love with Greenbottle - Its inventor, Martin Myerscough, came up with the idea in the pub. You can never be wrong with such ideas of course, later on he worked on it for 18 months before Asda started a ‘concept’ trial last year.

Kudos to Martin and Greenbottle. This is the kind of innovation we need to move the green revolution forward. I hope to see these bottles very soon on the shelves of the supermarkets here in the U.S. (and actually everywhere) as well.

Only 1.3% of imported food is inspected by the FDA, and of that small fraction, many hazardous items are confiscated. The average American consumes an estimated 260 pounds of imported food every year, which is roughly 13% of their diet. Food safety will always be a concern. Arming consumers with the knowledge of where their food comes from will not only help with everyday shopping, but also help in the case of a recall of a food from a specific region (like jalapeños from Mexico). While the new law has some benefits, many recent examples of food contamination and safety concerns show that it won’t do enough.

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According to Environmental Leader, the new report titled “Getting From Green To Gold: Retail Success Factors and Outcomes” lists the six key focus areas for retailers:

• Adopt enterprise-wide policies for green sourcing/procurement (59%)
• Institute eco-friendly mandates for waste management (54%)
• Institute eco-friendly mandates around packaging (48%)
• Redesign the retail supply chain to align with green/responsible mandates (41%)
• Offer eco-friendly end-of-life product programs to customers (41%)
• Redesign store facilities and infrastructure around sustainability goals (35%)

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I found a contender: Ecovative Design has come up with a number of products for packaging, building insulation, foam core (think: surfboards) and ye olde beer cooler that do away with styrofoam, using agricultural waste. And, making this even better, the ingredients for the product will come from local sources, whichever is the most prevalent in the area that it’s made.

So rather than trucking the same ag waste 1000s of miles to other regional factories, they have come up with a product that can flex what it contains without compromising the quality or integrity. For example, cellulose pulp from areas with lots of paper mills, and rice hulls in Texas, where a lot of rice is processed.

And it’s compostable, biodegradable, and if sent back to Ecovative, recyclable. Take that, styrofoam!

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The magical cleaning agent in your bar of hygiene is likely cow fat or oil from, say, coconut. At the manufacturing plant, a chemical process removes the valuable glycerin in the fats and oils to be used in other products. The leftovers are mixed with sodium hydroxide and then blasted dry to form soap pellets, which are then mixed with the colorants, fragrances and other ingredients that allow a humble soap to go by the name of Carribean Breeze or Lilac Meadow.

While the production of soap—or anything, really—has environmental repercussions all its own, the pretty smells in our personal care products are, perhaps, the issue most worth examining here. Many of the chemicals producing fine aromas have been linked to not-so-fine human ailments or tested on animals, and their disposal—down your shower drain in a sudsy stream—fills our water system with chemicals that do not readily biodegrade (or breakdown).

Now, how about a shave?

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Now, paper is back under the public eye in fuller force than ever because of its significant climate change footprint.
“Paper is a tremendously resource-intensive product to produce,” explains project manager Victoria Mills, “and the decomposition of paper in landfills generates methane, a greenhouse gas with 23 times the heat-trapping power of carbon dioxide.”

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Warning: so, as the video and Oprah’s darling du jour and guerrilla closet warrior Peter Walsh so clearly outlines, our pack-rat habits are making us chubby. They can also be a barrier to us going green. Not surprising, did you notice that your lean and toned friends also tend to have pretty darn spotless, sustainability-forward and organized homes, while your plumper friends tend to lavish in “chaotic creative” spaces. Hmmm…

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But we consumers are used to slick packaging and cool bags, boxes and wrappers. Designers are now challenged to come up with high-concept packaging that doesn’t waste resources.

It’s like Project Runway for everyday products. And here are some of the pioneering entrants in the less-weight, recyclable, biodegradable packaging challenge.

Three Thieves sells their Bandit wine in TetraPaks.

It’s different. It’s recyclable. Although a TetraPak not so unique, given that soymilk is packaged similarly, Three Thieves is definitely going against the grain in the wine industry.

Another wine company so believes in the power of its packaging that it devotes a significant part of its website to its TetraPak packaging, diving into the various layers in the package to describe how it is made and why they like it.

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She got me thinking. Since recycling has been on my radar lately, I have been more aware of my habits and the habits of the people around me. I noticed that I am much more diligent in getting my plastic and glass bottles in the correct place for recycling than I am with all my paper products. It wasn’t until I attended the lecture that I realized how much less of a guessing game paper recycling is, just how important it really is — more important than the resin code mystery in my last post — and how much I neglect the privilege. According to Samantha Macbride, if you want to make a difference, recycle more paper. She explained to us that paper is the most under recycled material. According to the EPA, 35% of total U.S. municipal solid waste generated in 2006 was paper and paperboard (graph source: EPA report).

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Well a recent graduate of Central St Martins’ Masters Industrial Design Program, Tom Ballhatchet, decided to use the guild in a constructive way. Instead of throwing away all this stamped foam packaging from his new flat-screen TV, Tom decided to construct an entertainment stand. It makes us think of the form of these extruded or stamped packaging part, oftentimes they are the same shape and size or have nice crevices that can serve as storage. My only wish in this project is that he found a way to incorporate the gigantic box and plastic wrap.

With this trend of Zero waste design and seeing packaging as superfluous, we are beginning to see even more products out there that use their packaging in the fully constructed form. Lite2Go’s packaging doubles as the actual lampshade leaving very little waste (the label and instructions for assembly). Designed by Knoed (i.e. know no-end), Lite2go is a good example of their mission statement- “taking into consideration the full life cycle of materials going into the products they design”. The packaging/shade is made of recyclable polypropylene plastic; and the electric cord and bulb can be recycled at the appropriate centers.

The interesting thing about this design is that it is just plain practical. One doesn’t have to be an eco-conscious consumer to see this. Why create extra packaging when it is unnecessary? Although the light is marketed as a green product, it could be marketed just as a light with a fun DIY surprise.

With this trend of cutting down on emissions and waste, we need to think beyond recycling. As recycling requires energy to break materials down into a new usable source, reusing materials for a new purpose is much more energy efficient. I challenge you to get creative with your waste and repurpose some of it at least once before you get rid of it.

Why can’t the makers of yogurt switch plastics? For one thing, as yogurt maker Stonyfield Farms has discovered, making the lightweight plastic tubs out of #5 plastics actually saves resources and uses less plastic overall.

By using #5 plastic instead of #2, each year we prevent the manufacture and disposal of over 100 tons of plastic, resulting in environmental savings from the decreased air emissions and resource depletion from the manufacture and distribution of the packaging. In addition, the polypropylene is manufactured without the use of chlorine, thus eliminating the hazards of deadly dioxin releases during manufacture and incineration, which occur with certain other plastics.

However, even if wide-mouthed containers were made from #2 plastics (and many are), they might not be getting recycled anyway. While recycling companies may accept all #2 plastics to avoid consmer confusion, some just recycle bottles and not wide-mouthed containers since these different shapes are molded using different processes and have different melting points.

So should you stop eating yogurt? Not necessarily. Unlike other yogurt manufacturers, to further reduce their impact, Stonyfield created a partnership with Recycline, makers of Preserve toothbrushes and razors, to give #5 plastic containers another life. If your local recycling program does not accept #5 plastic containers, you can send clean Stonyfield cups to Stonyfield Farms to ensure your yogurt cups stay out of the landfill.

Visit Planetsave to find out how to help Stonyfield Farms fight climate change.

Entry updated 9/28/07 to reflect that soda and water bottles are made with #1 plastics and #2 plastics, not just #2 as previously stated.

Reduce what you grab. Instead of taking handfuls, take just a few. One or two per person is usually sufficient.

Take-out. If you’re going home with your meal, let them know when you place your order that you don’t need utensils or napkins. New York City based activist group, Ecoagents, is trying to make this a widespread practice with their "Eco to go" campaign, which is helping restauranteurs (and their customers) reduce to-go packaging.

Dine in. If you’re staying say so. In many places you’ll at least be able to do without the to-go bag. In other places you’ll be able to eliminate your use of food packaging waste altogether.

Bring your own. Get in the habit of carrying around a set of utensils (along with your water bottle, coffee mug, handkerchief, shopping bag and napkin.) For take-out, bring your own container. GO’s Gavin Hudson takes a bread tin to his local mexican restaurant for them to pack up his burritos.

Amy says: I prefer to eat Chinese, Thai and Japanese take-out with chopsticks. But then I found out that disposable chopsticks use up a lot of trees, so I went out and got my own.

Related articles from GO:

Everyday Activism: Dining Without Disposables

Cut Back on Packaging with a Waste-Free Lunch

Eco-Effective Decisions: May I Have a Side of Food With my Plastic?

Share your eco-tip with us. If it’s published you’ll receive wind cards from Renewable Choice Energy .

Molded pulp products extend way beyond the drink trays you'll find at restaurants, cafes and sporting events and are used to ship everything from eggs to consumer electronics and are slowly replacing plastics and styrofoam as a preferred packaging material.

Molded pulp products are just that - molded paper pulp - reminiscent of papier mache. A series of machines take the wet newsprint/cardboard mixture, form it to a plastic mold, remove the excess water, then set it to dry. Molded pulp products are made from waste paper, often times 100% post-consumer content. They are completely biodegradable, recyclable and compostable.

From a manufacturer's or shipping perspective, it is an advantageous packaging material. It absorbs shocks and protects products like other, less eco-friendly packaging materials. It can be shaped to fit any custom need, and it is nestable and stackable, which takes up less room in storing and shipping the material. Computer manufacturer HP, for example, has pledged to switch over to molded pulp packaging from expanded polystyrene (EPS) in many of their products.

However, as consumers, we don't see a lot of this molded pulp packgaging until we open a new computer or DVD player. If you're lucky enough to come across molded pulp packaging in a product you purchase, be sure to recycle it and think about writing the company to thank them for their packaging choice.

As for that drink tray. Reuse it. If you're the designated coffee runner save the drink tray for your next trip. Or simply take the tray back inside and ask that the business reuse it for their next customer.

Amy says: This tip was inspired by a couple of teenagers I witnessed struggling to stuff their drink tray into a garbage can outside of a popular coffee stop in lower Manhattan. (I opted for no drink tray or handled shopping bag when offered for my two iced coffees.)

International Molded Pulp Environmental Packaging Association

Lighter Footstep: Five Ways to Fight Retail Overpackaging

Tip o' the Day: It's What's Inside (the Package) That Counts

Americans alone use and dispose of enough paper and plastic cups, forks, and spoons every year to circle the equator 300 times. Lets break this down, mathematically first (then we can physically break down the paper and plastics). If the circumference of the earth at the equator is 24,901.55 miles (a bit longer than measured at the poles), and there are 365 days in the year, then we dispose of 20,467.027 miles of disposable paper and plastic to go ware each day! That is about enough distance to stretch from the coast of Gabon (the westernmost country in Africa on the equator) all the way around the world to the eastern mouth of the Amazon in South America, every day!!!

If this startles you, consult your daily schedule and you will be surprised with how many disposable items we throw out daily. Here is a scenario for you: a gentleman goes out to lunch during his workday. He orders a sandwich and a side salad, with a fountain beverage. He orders it “to go” so he can sit in the park and eat in a more pleasant space. The food service worker wraps his sandwich in paper, puts it in a plastic bag, puts his salad that is in a plastic container in the plastic bag along with a prepackaged plastic silverware set equipped with paper packages of salt and pepper, and a paper napkin. He sits and enjoys his meal, and ends up throwing out more than half the volume of what he consumed.

An easy solution to ease the impact of disposables is to bring your own silverware to eat with and a bag to put your items in. I want to introduce you to a little product called to-go-ware. The company was started by Stephanie Bernstein who had an epiphany over a cup of ice cream “for here” that was dished in a paper cup with a plastic spoon. She decided to design a small package of utensils (spoon, fork, knife, chopsticks) made of bamboo that one can bring along with them daily. The utensils are kept in a cloth pouch (which serves as your napkin) that wraps up into a small long sleeve. You carry it around with you every day to avoid the result of our convenience culture.

The tragic thing about food service that is different than purchasing clothing, is that you cant really give back a disposable good once it has been given to you. In other words you can’t lick the ice cream off the spoon once they’ve stuck it in your cup and say, “thanks, but I brought my own! Can you reuse this?” It is certainly worth a try in order to stimulate a consideration, but it does not entirely meet food code. So, although to-go-ware is partially effective and a great product, we need to begin even deeper and earlier in the service-to-customer relationship. We need to be more proactive and make sure we tell our server to please leave out as many disposables as entirely possible.

I lived in New York City for the summer of 2003 and I used to go get iced coffee a few mornings of the week around the block. I remember being so startled upon receiving my simple small iced coffee because I also received the added value (waste) of 3 napkins, a straw, and a paper bag that they put my full (yet soon to be empty) disposable plastic cup in. I had to stop going there because they would neglect to meet my request of “no napkins or straw or lid or bag please”. It was the full package deal or nothing. This was when I really began to realize how many little things we throw out every day that often times are never even used. Our consumer driven convenience culture is in part supported by the service industry. Convenience is no longer a conscious decision to leverage; convenience is an assumed desire.

So, to prove the service industry otherwise make sure you request no-few disposables. Try this next time: When you call in you’re “to go” order for family dinner pizza, ask for no disposable silverware, no cups for the soda, and no plates with the pizza. And upon pickup bring your own tray or plate to take the pizza home on as opposed to taking it home in a large cardboard box. Of course there will have to be sacrifices, but like every change, once we get used to them, it no longer seems difficult or different.

To-Go-Ware
Tip o' the Day: Bring Your Own Coffee Mug

Image courtesy of To-Go Ware

As a household item, aluminum foil has a multitude of uses, especially in the kitchen. When storing or cooking food, foil keeps the good stuff in and keeps out light, unwanted moisture and bacteria. Just make sure to not wrap acidic foods, such as oranges, lemons or tomatoes as they'll react with the aluminum. And keep it out of the microwave.

Although foil is not made from petroleum, the mining and processing of aluminum is extremely resource intensive. The good news is aluminum foil is 100% recycleable, and recycled aluminum foil uses 95% less energy to produce than foil made from virgin aluminum.

Recycled aluminum foil is available at many major supermarkets these days, but if you can't find it at a store near you it is available online. And before you throw the foil in your recycling bin, make sure to get as much food off of it as possible. Check out the website of your local department of sanitation or recycling service for more information on aluminum recycling in your area.

Amy says: I don't have a microwave and often reheat things in the oven. I'll store my leftovers in the fridge on an oven safe plate/dish covered with foil that way I can just pop it right into the oven when I'm ready, which saves a lot of prep time. To store the foil, I flatten it out, wash it off (as best as I can) and fold it up. I find I don't go through as much foil by reusing it, which makes the $3.99 roll of recycled aluminum foil well worth the price tag.

More info at Grist.org

Maybe this has happened to you. A desk pen set which comes in shoebox-sized packaging. One aspirin, shrink-wrapped on a six-by-six inch card. A small electronic part that arrives wrapped in more plastic than the device itself.

What a waste! It's over-packaging, and your local landfill is bursting with it.

Why all this packaging?

There's nothing wrong with reasonable packaging; we all want the stuff we buy to be clean and undamaged. But retail packaging has a dual purpose — protecting a product, and getting you to buy it. The latter case is where things get out of hand.

The aisles of your local grocery or department store are a battleground. Vendors spend big money fighting for shelf space. Once they have it, they want to be seen. Hence the millions of dollars spent annually by companies in the design of over-the-top packaging with high "shelf appeal."

Trashing the environment

The problem with over-packaging is twofold: it wastes raw materials, and most of it ends up in our already overburdened landfill systems. A lot of packaging is made of plastic, too, meaning it will be around for centuries.

To make things worse, much of the plastic used in packaging isn't marked for recycling. It'll be a treasure trove for future archeologists — assuming we all don't drown in garbage first.

What you can do to fight over-packaging

You are the consumer. You're the end user. Ultimately, what you say goes.

So don't take over-packaging lying down. We've rounded-up five ideas to help you fight the glut of unnecessary garbage. Pick a few — and help wrap-up a big mess!

Vote with your purchase

You can be assured that big companies pay very close attention to the relationship of packaging changes and sales. Thanks to modern inventory systems, product movement can be traced right down to the shelf of your local big-box retailer.

Make this work for the good. When confronted with several equivalent products, choose the one with the least (or most environmentally friendly) packaging. This is the slow boat to change, but it strikes directly at the root of over-packing: profit.

Can't find something with reasonable wrapping? If possible, put off your purchase and chase one of the following options.

Tell companies what you think

Direct customer input is a powerful thing. Done right, a phone call or a well written letter can have real impact on the way a product is presented.

It's always helpful to take a pen and pad of paper when you shopping. See a horribly over-packaged product? Jot down the customer feedback info on the sidepanel and take action.

Be polite, but be very specific. Say where you were, what you saw, and why you didn't buy. If you bought a competing product, say so. Then challenge them to do a better job. If you keep a blog, write it up and include a link with your communication. Just stick to the facts and avoid heated rhetoric. It's true about honey catching more flies than vinegar.

Don't have a blog of your own? Send your story to OverPackaging.com.

Recycle your packaging

It's not always possible to avoid buying over packaged goods. When that happens, make the best of things and recycle properly.

Not recycling yet? Now is a great time to start. Pick up some beginner's tips from RecycleNow. For a list of your local recycling centers, visit the grandaddy of "how to" recycling website, Earth911.

Recycling can also mean repurposing. Hang onto those styrofoam peanuts — they'll come in handy. Can a box be put to some other use? And platic food containers make great drawer organizers. Get creative!

Buy in bulk

This is a great way to stomp out over-packaging. Those warehouse stores really manage costs, which means you'll find goods taped are shrink-wrapped together, rather than sold separately. Why buy three boxes of macaroni when you can buy a big one and save a lot of cardboard?

Opportunities to buy unpackaged goods fall under this umbrella, also. Food co-ops usually expect you to bring your own containers to distribution, which is great. Veggies at your local farmer's market are unlikely to be packaged at all, and you'll be saving all that fuel and carbon dioxide used in transporting groceries cross-country.

Bulk buying demands organization at home. Arm yourself with plenty of airtight storage containers. If you're buying frozen goods, consider a top-opening chest freezer. They use less energy than refrigerator models, and are the ideal place for frozen storage.

Buy used

As the saying goes, "Why buy new, when used will do?" In this case, buying used would ideally be done on the local level (to avoid the burden of shipping).

Newspapers, weekly shoppers, your local craigslist board, Freecycle^TM, thrift stores, flea markets, and garage sales are all likely places to find what you want. Almost nothing you find will be packaged, and you're putting an item to use which might otherwise have been discarded.

In a way, this is a bit of retro-recycling for the product's original packaging. Every time an item changes hands and makes a purchase unnecessary, you've diluted the impact of its original manufacturing, transport, and packaging. So don't keep a good thing to yourself — take those useful items and pass them on!

Copyright © 2007 Lighter Footstep Media

If you're one of the few people in the world that still purchases music on a CD (and granted, that's the majority of you), then you'll be happy to know that one music label is planning on greening the packaging containing your tunes.

Warner Music announced earlier this month that all of its CD and DVDs sold in the U.S. will use environmentally friendly paper packaging by the end of March. The paper will contain post-consumer recycled fibers, not originate from clear-cut timber or virgin forests, and will not be manufactured with pulping caustic that contains mercury.

And that's only the first phase. Working with the National Resource Defense Council, Warner is also increasing its use of recycled-content paper, converting more paper materials to electronic formats, and encouraging company-wide recycling. Additionally, they are working on initiatives to reduce their overall carbon footprint in relation to greenhouse gas emissions. For instance, this year's post-Grammy awards party was completely carbon neutral. Not bad, right?

The press release contains a bunch more goodies pertaining to their future greening activities, but overall, it's encouraging to see a music company take such steps. The real evolution and green embrace will happen when music and movies are no longer sold in packaging, but online. Till then (and it's coming), this is a positive step in efficiency and resource management. Hit the jump for more.

via Maria Energia