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We believe in reserving plastics for applications where they’re critical, such as food storage, cleanups, industrial, agricultural and medical uses. This blog series is a resource to help us all make better choices and ensure that plastics everywhere have purpose.

Does This Smell Funny to You? 7 Shocking Facts About the Food You Throw Away.

Does This Smell Funny to You? 7 Shocking Facts About the Food You Throw Away.

From heart valves to helmets, there isn’t a person alive that hasn’t benefitted from plastic materials and products.
How to Toss the Waste Out of Your Commercial Facilities Budget

How to Toss the Waste Out of Your Commercial Facilities Budget

The plastics industry has been innovating with bioplastics for years—another example of how we are working toward a sustainable…

Reducing Food Waste

Americans waste 150,000 tons of food each day—a third of all the calories we consume. Plastics play a critical role in saving food from

See How Long Different Foods Last Without Plastic Wrap.

Why do cucumbers and apples need shrink wrap? Don’t grocers realize how much plastic they’re wasting? They may not be wasting anything at all. As it turns out, plastic waste isn’t the industry’s biggest environmental problem. Food waste is.

Americans throw away a whopping 30-40% of their food—not just scraps and trimmings, but wholesome food that’s perfectly good to eat. Often, we toss away food solely on the basis of appearance. Vegetables wilt from lack of humidity. Meat turns brown when exposed to oxygen. Both can still be safe and tasty, even if they don’t look quite as appealing as the day you brought them home. The challenge is to keep the food we grow fresher longer—so more of it reaches our plate, and less ends up in landfills.

What can we do about all this waste? Plastic packaging could be part of the solution. Plastic dramatically extends the shelf life of food, giving it a better chance of being eaten instead of landing in the trash.  

See how much longer popular foods last when they’re packaged in plastic.

 

 

Cucumber

Unwrapped Wrapped in Plastic
Lasts for Lasts for
5 days Up to 14 days

Cucumbers seem like the poster child for excessive packaging. What’s wrong with cucumbers’ natural skins? According to the Cucumber Growers’ Association, unwrapped cucumbers can degrade to the point that they are essentially unsellable after just 3 days. A thin plastic wrapping can make them last nearly 5 times as long. 

Many other foods benefit from a little plastic protection:

 

Red Meat

Unwrapped Wrapped in Plastic
Lasts for Lasts for
3 days 6 days

 

 

Bananas

Unwrapped Wrapped in Plastic
Lasts for Lasts for
15 days 36 days

 

 

Bell Peppers

Unwrapped Wrapped in Plastic
Lasts for Lasts for
4 days 20 days

 

INCPEN, a packaging industry trade association, says plastic wrapping also helps protect fruit with delicate skin—like apples—from bruising. Damaged fruit is much more likely sit unsold in a produce bin.

 

Apples

Wrapped in Plastic
27% Less Waste
from Orchard to Table

 

Today, consumers are rightly concerned about wasteful packaging. But if plastic can help keep $1 trillion in food out of landfills, it may not really be wasteful at all.

 

<call-out: infographic—This could be developed for social media>

WHY FOOD WASTE MATTERS

FOOD 

is the most prevalent material in 

LANDFILLS

LANDFILLS

generate

20% of all 

METHANE EMISSIONS

METHANE is a GREENHOUSE GAS that’s 21 times 

MORE POTENT 

than C02

We use 30% of ALL AGRICULTURAL LAND ON EARTH And MORE WATER than

ANY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD

to grow food that is 

THROWN AWAY

without being eaten

 

References:

https://www.carboncommentary.com/blog/2007/10/29/food-packaging-and-climate-change

https://cen.acs.org/articles/94/i41/cost-plastic-packaging.html

https://blog.americanchemistry.com/2018/03/reason-why-we-use-plastics-to-package-food/#_ftn2

 

Gigantic Bag is committed to providing education and resources to ensure that all plastics, are plastics with purpose.
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