If it looks like plastic surrounds nearly every cucumber, apple and pepper in the produce aisle, it does.
What started with cellophane in the 1930s picked up speed with the increase of plastic clamshells in the 1980s and bagged salads in the 1990s. Online grocery shopping has turbocharged it.
But now the race is on for what people who grow and sell fruits and vegetables call a moon shot: breaking the plastic stranglehold on produce.
In a March survey of manufacturing professionals on LinkedIn, the switch to biodegradable material was voted on the leading trend. “It’s huge,” said Soren Bjorn, chief executive officer of Driscoll’s, the world’s largest grower of berries, which has switched to paper containers in many European markets.
Spain has a plastic tax. France limits products wrapped in plastic and the European Union is about to add its own restrictions. Canada is trying to hammer out a plan that could eliminate plastic produce packaging by 95 percent by 2028. In the United States, 11 states have already restricted plastic packaging. As part of a sweeping anti-waste plan, the Biden administration is calling for new ways to package food that use climate-friendly, antimicrobial materials designed to reduce reliance on plastic.
So we agree that eliminating plastic is the answer?
Reducing the use of plastic is an obvious way to push back against climate change. Plastic is created from fossil fuels, the largest contributes to greenhouse gases. It chokes the oceans and permeates the food chain. Estimates vary, but about 40 percent of plastic waste comes from packaging.
However, plastic is currently the most effective tool to combat another environmental threat: food waste.
The Wirecutter shares tips to keep your produce fresh for weeks.
Selling produce is like holding a melting ice cube and asking how much someone will pay for it. Time is of the essence, and plastic works well to slow the decay of vegetables and fruits. That means less produce is thrown into the waste, where it’s mostly created 60 percent of landfill methane emissions, according to a 2023 report by the Environmental Protection Agency.
A Swiss study in 2021 showed that every rotting cucumber thrown away has the equivalent environmental impact of 93 plastic cucumber wrappers.
Food is the most common material in landfills. The average American family of four spends $1,500 per year on inedible food. Of those, fruits and vegetables make up about half of all household food waste, according to research from Michigan State University. And it’s not just wasted food that contributes to climate change. The farming and transportation wasted to produce food that is thrown away also affects the climate.
Avoiding food waste and reducing plastic use are not mutually exclusive goals. Both are high on the Biden administration’s agenda, released in December a draft of a national strategy to halve the country’s food loss by 2030.
Are the Americans on board?
Consumers more reporting that using less plastic and packaging is important to them, but their shopping habits tell a different story. American consumers bought $4.3 billion worth of bagged salad last year, according to the International Fresh Produce Association. Marketing experiments and independent research both show that price, quality and convenience drive food choices over environmental concerns.
Grocers also have to make tough decisions. Consumers have complained about having to buy products that already exist packed in plastic and with a price. Not selling by weight is easier for the store, as workers don’t have to weigh each item. But this often forces consumers to buy more than they need.
The battle lines seem to be drawn between the non-plastic crowd and consumers who prefer the convenience of fresh salad greens delivered to their doorstep.
“The packaging conversation is held by one side or the other,” said Max Teplitski, chief science officer of the International Fresh Produce Association. He led the Alliance for Sustainable Packaging for Foodsa collection of industry trade groups formed in January.
The group’s priority is to ensure that any packaging changes will keep the food safe and preserve its quality.
What alternatives to plastic are coming?
Here are some new ideas head to the product aisle:
Bags from trees. An Austrian company is using beechwood trees to make biodegradable cellulose net bags to hold products. Other companies offer similar netting decaying in a few weeks.
Film from skins. Orange peels, shrimp skins and more natural waste is made into a film that can be used like cellophane, or made into a bag. An edible coating made of plant-based fatty acids is sprayed on cucumbers, avocados and other produce sold in bulk. major grocery stores. They work in a similar way to the wax coating commonly used on citrus and apples.
Shells from cardboard. Plastic clamshells are a $9.1 billion business in the United States, and the number of growers using them is vast. Replacing them is a huge challenge, especially for more fragile fruits and vegetables. A lot of designers is trying. Driscoll’s works to form paper containers for use in the United States and Canada. Meanwhile, the company uses more recycled plastic on its shells in the United States.
Gelatin-like ice. Luxin Wang and other scientists at the University of California, Davis, invented jelly ice can be reused. It is lighter than ice and does not melt. This can eliminate the need for plastic ice packs, which cannot be recycled. After about a dozen uses, jelly ice can be thrown in a garden or in the garbage, where it melts.
Boxes with environment. Broccoli is usually shipped in wax-coated boxes filled with ice. Wet cartons cannot be recycled. Broccoli shipping containers without ice use a mixture of gases that help preserve the vegetable instead of freezing it with ice, which is heavy to ship and can transmit pathogens when it melts. Other sustainable, lighter shipping cartons are designed to remove the ethylenea plant hormone that induces ripening.
Containers from plants. rice-paddy straw leftovers after harvest, grass, Sugarcane stalks and even food waste are made into trays and boxes that are either biodegradable or compostable.
Problem solved, right?
Almost not. Even if every grower and grocer starts using packaging that can be recycled or composted, America’s infrastructure for turning it into something other than trash is spotty at best. Less than 10 percent of all plastic is recycled, a figure that is even lower for product packaging, says Eva Almenara professor at Michigan State University’s School of Packaging. Only a small fraction of packaging labeled compostable stays out of the landfill.
It just is 3 percent of wasted food lands in industrial composting centers. Several states no commercial operation which can compost food waste.
“We don’t have the right to the technology, and we don’t have the collection systems,” said Dr. General.
Although the infrastructure is in place, the habits of the people are not. “Consumers have no idea about what green, compostable or recyclable means,” he said.
Practically, no one has yet developed an affordable plastic alternative that can be recycled or composted and keeps fruits and vegetables safe and fresh. Plastic allows packers to change the mixture of gases within a package in a way that extends the shelf life and quality of fresh produce.
“The pushback you get is that if you get rid of plastic and go to fiber, it’s going to run out of shelf life really quickly,” said Scott Crawford, vice president of merchandising for Baldor Specialty Foods and a veteran of Whole Foods Market and Fresh Direct. . “The question is which part of the balloon are you trying to squeeze?”
The ideal solution, he said, is to return to the pre-plastic days, when grocers stacked their produce by hand and no one demanded that seasonal fruits like blueberries be available throughout. year.
“I don’t think we’ll live to see that,” he said.
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