Getting to the Source of Packaging:
What’s Environmentally Correct?

According to Partners for Environmental Progress, an organization that promotes source reduction, here are some head to head comparisons of common packaging.  Of course, if you’re absolutely sure the product you are using gets recycled and won’t wind up in a landfill, it might be the better choice.

An 18 ounce glass jar or an 18 ounce plastic jar of peanut butter?  The glass jar weighs 10.2 ounces versus the plastic jar’s 1.7 ounces.  Glass gets recycled 30% of the time, meaning that an average of 7.1 ounces of a container winds up in a landfill.  Even if a plastic container doesn’t get recycled, it takes four of them to produce the equivalent volume as a glass jar.  That’s four times less waste.

A 13 ounce brick pack of coffee or a 13 ounce steel can?  An aluminum foil or plastic film vacuum pack uses 85 percent less packaging material that a steel can. Although 35 percent of all steel cans are recycled, and virtually none of the foil or plastic, steel cans still generate 4.5 times more material for landfills than the brick materials.  At least 85 percent of all steel cans would have to be recycled in order to make the equation equal.

A 40 count metal box of bandages or a 40 count cardboard box?  The cardboard box consists of 0.3 ounces of packaging compared to the 1.4 ounces of the metal box.  That means the cardboard uses 79 percent less waste.

One 12-pack of soft drink cans in cardboard or two 6-packs of sodas in plastic rings?  The cans and the soda are the same, but the cardboard carton weighs 3.02 ounces versus the 0.24 ounces from the plastic rings.  That translates into 92 percent less packaging.  Although it is better to purchase the soda cans in the cardboard and recycle it than to have to throw the plastic rings out where they might get tangled around fish or wildlife.