Source Reduction

Everyday Waste
Reducing Waste from the Start
The Wrap on Packaging
Changes in Packaging
Reducing Waste at Home

EVERYDAY WASTE

“Got up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head,” the song goes. But what if a couple of comb teeth break off?  Just throw the comb away and buy a new one. Then it’s downstairs for breakfast. Perhaps you’ll have a microwavable pancake breakfast with a throwaway tray. Or maybe you’ll take along an individually wrapped pastry and a juice-in-a-box for breakfast on the school bus.

Rrring! The school bell signals the start of school. First period English class begins, and you pull out your disposable pen and throwaway spiral notebook. Later it’s time for lunch in the school cafeteria. You finish eating today’s mystery meat and toss the disposable utensils, cups, and plates in the trash. After school you stop by the store to buy film for your camera. When you open the cardboard box, you notice the film is also packaged in a plastic canister. And so the day goes.

Imagine this scenario played out every day by young Americans across the country. You and every American adult and child generate more than four and one half pounds of waste every day of your life, more waste than citizens of any other country.

Given the hectic lifestyle of many modern families, Americans are unlikely to give up the comfort and convenience of disposables. More municipal solid waste is the price we pay for products that are time saving, convenient, and disposable. Unless we are prepared to make significant changes in our life-styles and attitudes, we need to ask ourselves, “What are we going to do with all that trash?”

Waste Generation Around the World
(pounds per person per day)

REDUCING WASTE FROM THE START

Source reduction is an important way of keeping our daily waste from growing and growing. Source reduction means reducing the amount of material that enters the waste stream in the first place. 

Common sense tells us that reducing the amount of waste we produce is the easiest way to solve America’s mounting garbage problem. It avoids disposal and pollution problems right from the start, and it conserves natural resources and energy. Reducing waste at the beginning means there will be less waste to be recycled, burned, or landfilled.

THE WRAP ON PACKAGING

CONTAINERS & PACKAGING

Packaging—the stuff we wrap or box consumer products in—has become the target of most source reduction efforts. Packaging is the single largest product in the waste stream.

Just look at the products lining grocery store shelves. Bread is wrapped in a plastic bag. Soup comes in a can. Cookies are arranged on plastic trays that are slipped inside paper bags. Six bottles of cola are wrapped together in plastic. Sometimes even apples are arranged on a cardboard or foam tray and then wrapped in plastic. As one person put it, “The list is as long as the supermarket aisle.” 

Yet packaging serves many useful purposes. The bread wrapper keeps the bread fresh and clean. The soup can keeps the soup fresh for months on grocery store shelves. The cookie tray keeps the cookies from getting crushed. The plastic wrapping around soft drinks makes it easy to grasp six bottles of cola in one hand. The wrapped apples mean less time selecting food.

Without a doubt, packaging provides a convenient and sanitary way to store and transport food and other products. Sometimes, though, packaging is more a marketing ploy—the purpose being to make the product look bigger and better than its competitors. This packaging does not come free. Americans pay a price for all the wrapping and glitter. Eleven percent of the money ($11 of every $100) your family spends on groceries winds up in the garbage bin!

And it had better be a big garbage bin. Packaging makes up 32 percent of the municipal solid waste stream by weight, or 27 percent by volume. At first glance, many Americans may think the percentage for containers and packaging is very high. Packaging—particularly food packaging—gets a lot of attention because we bring it into our homes, because we see it in our trash every day, and because it is noticeable.

However, it’s important to consider some of the items we don’t see in our trash, thanks to packaging. For example, a recent study found that residents of Mexico City produce 40 percent more garbage than their American counterparts. One of the reasons is the use of less packaging. Mexican waste contains far more spoiled food than found in U.S. landfills. Indeed, food spoilage in the U.S. averages less than three percent. Thanks to this low spoilage rate, the U.S. has the world’s least expensive food supply.

In less developed countries such as Mexico, where packaging is minimal, food spoilage rates can reach 50 percent. With crude packaging and distribution systems, many parts of the world still have a serious problem with food safety, supply, and spoilage.

CHANGES IN PACKAGING

There is some good news about packaging. The Environmental Protection Agency—an agency of the federal government—reports that manufacturers are reducing the amount of waste in consumer products. Companies that make consumer products are doing several things to reduce waste. 

For one, they are redesigning products so they need less packaging. Consumers can now buy fabric softener concentrate in small paperboard cartons, instead of buying big plastic jugs every time. Concentrated products can reduce packaging by 75 percent.

Second, companies are using fewer materials to package products. Compact discs (CDs) are a good example. Just a few years ago, CDs were packaged in cardboard containers twice the size of the actual CDs. When young people and recording artists demanded a change in the way CDs were packaged, the recording industry responded. Today, most new CDs are sold in shrink-wrapped jewel boxes.

In addition, virtually all manufacturers are using less material to make bottles, jars, and cans. The soft drink industry, for example, is making thinner bottles and cans. Today’s two-liter plastic bottles are 25 percent lighter than when they were introduced in 1977. Glass jars are 43 percent lighter than they were in 1970. There are now 34 cans per pound of aluminum, up from 22 in 1972.

Companies can reduce waste by using less packaging to bring a product to market. Intel Corporation, for example, changed their individual packaging for network cards, saving 320,000 pounds of plastic a year. The new style also reduced the size of the bulk boxes needed, saving 270,000 pounds of corrugated packaging a year. Finally, because the packages are smaller and lighter, less energy is needed to transport the cards to market.

Other industries are doing their part, too. Disposable diapers are thinner than before, keeping babies dry with half as much material. Ice cream cartons weigh 30 percent less because of changes to the materials and design. And when McDonald’s made its drinking straws 20 percent lighter, it eliminated one million pounds of solid waste per year.

The benefit of all these efforts by industry is less waste––less waste to put into landfills, recycle, or burn.

REDUCING WASTE AT HOME

You can help reduce waste at home by learning basic waste-saving habits. You can buy products that come in concentrated forms or products that use minimal packaging. And you can reuse, repair, recycle, or compost products that would otherwise be thrown away. 

REDUCE