A Consumers Guide To Navigating Supermarkets Amidst a Global Plastic Catastrophe
By: Zach Thurston
Introduction: The Rise of Modern Super Markets and our Relationship with Food and its Sourcing
Urbanization as a consequence of increasing populations has vastly affected our relationships with, and how we obtain food and water. As individuals transitioned from small to densely populated communities, an innovative change in transportation infrastructure became necessary to move large quantities of food over long distances. Additionally, figuring out how to preserve those products became increasingly important as distances became longer from farm to shelf. As populations became denser, lifestyles began to change. The average workday slowly shifted away from property maintenance, and local food sourcing and was replaced by elements of Capitalist and Fordist ideologies, promoting specialized labor, efficient production chains, communal workspaces, and allowing food and water to be obtained by purchasing them from corporations instead of local trading/bartering via community farms and shops. Urbanization, Industrialism, Capitalism, and Fordism increased working hours dramatically, leaving less time to purchase and prepare fresh/local produce without risk of spoilage. In other words, “increases in the urban population translated into an increase in people dependent on food purchasing” due to a change in lifestyle, which required the global food-system economy to grow to meet the new and evolving needs of consumers.
The most notable shift in the growth of the food-system economy occurred in the 1960s when the international food trade increased exponentially due to advancements in industrial agriculture. Furthermore, this propagated the rise of Big Food corporations, such as Nestlé and Cargill. These large corporations hoped to profit from the ability to supply convenient, processed, palatable food, with the convenience of long shelf lives to appeal to a time-crunch lifestyle that demanded long work hours and less time in the home. The progressing popularity of a convenience factor in food items vastly changed what was offered in modern supermarkets. Cheap, palatable, and long-lasting items are now a necessity for the average consumer, and the majority of these products continue to originate from “labor-saving technologies by intensive farming agribusinesses’’ and “highly processed packaged food” from the Big-Food corps.
A Plastic Saturated Market as Related to Environmental Justice
Today, the continued influence of Capitalism and Fordism in relation to the global food system economy has created a plethora of socio-environmental hazards across the world. Many of these issues intersect with Environmental Justice narratives, which put simply, is a social movement that aims to address how to mitigate negative environmental externalities produced by climate change from inequitably affecting marginalized communities. To explain in more detail, a Capitalist and Fordist framework will always reward private corporations for successfully increasing their product output, in less time, using less resources. Doing so provides an opportunity to increase profit margins. Given the competitive nature of capitalism, corporations are continually pressured to develop more efficient means of production each year, to outperform other rival industries looking to sell their products to a shared consumer base. This scenario offers no exception for the global food economy. As industrial agriculture becomes more efficient at producing food, Big-Food corporations (Nestlé, Cargill, etc.) also compete to produce more food items, using fewer resources, while also ensuring that those products remain undamaged and preserved using reliable packaging, ie: single-use plastic. Due to an increasing annual influx of more items hitting the shelves of our supermarkets each year, it leaves no room to doubt that improper disposal of single-use plastics is also increasing. Our oceans, beaches, parks, neighborhoods, and backyards are continually being littered with more waste every year, producing a variety of health concerns for all people, especially individuals living in low-income areas or developing countries.
A Consumers Burden
The question of “who is responsible?” for the world’s plastic pollution crisis, along with the slew of other environmental problems, is often answered by placing the burden on consumers. Looking at the current product use infrastructure, industry produces and transports products to shops, where consumers can purchase them, and are then held accountable for ensuring they are disposed of properly. However, the opportunities for any given consumer to have the access, and time, to ensure that the single-use plastics they purchased are disposed of or recycled responsibly, is an absurd expectation to live up to. According to the EPA, the amount of plastic that ends up being successfully recycled only makes up a small percentage of plastic waste produced in the United States. The table and graph below measure the management of plastic waste produced in tons from 1960 (the rise of modern supermarkets, long shelf life items, and increased plastic use) up until 2018. Within this roughly 60-year time frame, not only is the increase in plastic generation clear, but it is also clear that only a small fraction is disposed of responsibly.
Furthermore, recycling costs in many U.S. cities are increasing, creating a rift in affordability for lower socio-economic classes to participate in responsible waste management. According to the New York Times, “recycling companies are recouping their lost profits by charging cities more, in some cases four times what they charged [the previous] year.” Even here, in Tompkins County, recycling costs increased from “$60 to $70 for 2021” due to increased operational costs. Due to the decrease in individuals able to afford recycling fees, many cities are relying on landfills and incinerators to get rid of excess plastic waste that would have otherwise been recycled if residents could front these costs. Additionally, some developed countries, such as the U.S. have opted to pay underdeveloped countries to take and store plastic waste on their own land, creating an out of sight, out of mind, disposal culture.
Considering these stats, consumers are still held liable for the negative socio-environmental impacts of plastic pollution. While it is true that attempting to change consumer behaviors, such as education on why recycling, reusing or buying in bulk is important, can lead to a decrease in poor waste disposal habits, the reality is most consumers don’t have the luxury to employ these suggestions on the regular. It would arguably make more sense to place pressure on the industries that are responsible for producing and distributing these plastics in the first place. Sixty years of data and educational campaigns have proven that holding consumers accountable for reducing plastic waste, and preventing poor plastic waste disposal, has not yielded the results necessary to relive the negative impacts of plastic pollution. In many cases, consumers are more than willing to purchase items that are not encased in single-use plastics. The issue is that the average consumer is hardly offered a choice; virtually every purchasable item in a supermarket, aside from fresh produce, contains some component of plastic packaging, making the effort to “shop green’’ burdensome.
The Modern Consumers Struggle to Avoid Single Use Plastics — A Near Impossible Task
The normalization of plastic packaging has, in some cases, become completely unnecessary. Jessica Marshall, a freelance writer based in St Paul, Minnesota, wrote about her experience trying to avoid “pointless plastic.” Jessica writes that it was virtually “impossible” to avoid plastic in supermarkets, and she found countless examples of plastic packaging that was unnecessary, like “shrink-wrapped coconuts” or glass baby food containers sealed in extra layers of plastic wrap. Similarly, Martha Bebinger, a news writer for WBUR, was challenged to “ purchase a week’s worth of food and leave the grocery store without any plastic in my bag. This included no jugs of juice, yogurt containers, cellophane windows in chip bags, plastic packages, or even stickers on some produce.” In her experience, “Tofu, cheese, yogurt and pretty much everything in the dairy section was out.” After completing her trip, Martha admitted she “wasn’t prepared” and “didn’t realize how many things would be off limits.” Green-minded consumers around the world have faced similar situations to Jessica and Martha, and their opinions concerning the issue are far from quiet. In fact, outrage is so prevalent, that many social media platforms are dedicated to stigmatizing and humoring the use of “pointless plastic.” An Instagram account called “Pointless Packaging” posts a variety of examples regarding this issue, one being a photo of unnecessary plastic wrapping surrounding individual bananas in a supermarket.
In opposition to consumers demanding greater autonomy in what they purchase, Fred Hayes of the US Packaging Machinery Manufacturers Institute defends the examples above. He states that “pointless packaging” does have a justified reason for existing. For one, “large, impenetrable plastic clamshells that surround computer accessories guard against theft by making the goods impossible to unpackage and too big to hide under a coat.” Furthermore, in the food industry, “packages have to survive automated production lines and the shipping process, so they must be strong and stackable.” Although there is sound reasoning behind these choices at an operational level for product distribution and efficiency, many consumers remain unconvinced that the tradeoffs at a large scale are justifiable and equitable in relation to public health and environmental hazards.
Externalities of Plastic Waste — Effects on Public Health and the Environment
As CNN writer Helena Varkkey states “The irony is that no matter how far this waste is distanced,” or how it is improperly disposed of, “it still ends up somewhere on Spaceship Earth, humankind’s one and only home.” The reality is that we are living through a global plastic catastrophe, and the effects of improper disposal have produced horrendous externalities for marginalized communities and ecosystems around the world.
To start, a 2020 study by The Endocrine Society found that “Plastics contain and leach hazardous chemicals, including endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) that threaten human health.” Specifically, increased exposure to plastic has been proven to “cause cancer, diabetes, reproductive disorders, and neurological impairments of developing fetuses and children.” Furthermore, the lead author of the study, Jodi Flaws, commented that “Many of the plastics we use every day at home and work” which are most often obtained from supermarkets and Big-FoodCorps, “are exposing us to a harmful cocktail of endocrine-disrupting chemicals.” The co-author of the study, Paulina Damdimopoulou, added to Jodi’s point claiming, “Endocrine-disrupting chemical exposure is not only a global problem today, but it poses a serious threat to future generations…when a pregnant woman is exposed, EDCs can affect the health of her child and eventual grandchildren. Animal studies show EDCs can cause DNA modifications that have repercussions across multiple generations.”
The scary part about this is nobody is considered truly safe from these effects. Given the relevance of plastic consumption in our everyday lives and poor plastic disposal at a global level, it would be naive to say that any given person is unaffected. Everyone has been exposed to these effects, but the degree to which it has affected you personally largely depends on what your socio-economic status is and where you live geographically. For example, lower-income communities are often exposed to more plastic waste than affluent communities. This is because “low-income households are often targeted with more plastic packaging and single-use products” as they are typically cheaper, and “end up polluting neighborhoods and waterways.” Additionally, the University of Michigan found that plastic incinerators and landfills “are often built in neighborhoods where whites have already been moving out, and poor minority residents have been moving in.” This is thought to occur because “low-income communities are seen as the path of least resistance” in terms of zoning and city planning laws, “because they have fewer resources and political clout to oppose the siting of unwanted facilities.”
Given this reality, overall, marginalized communities, especially women and children, are more likely to bear the brunt of the negative health impacts of plastic production, use, and poor waste management practices. This is due to increased daily exposure to plastic, whether it is from microplastic contamination in food (most often found in seafood), toxic gasses that are released into the air from plastic incinerators, such as dioxins, furans, mercury, and polychlorinated biphenyls, or from being physically near landfills.
Environmental Justice, International Concerns
To take a broader lens on this issue, “developing countries are likely to accept plastic waste from developed countries because it offers another potential source of income for their population living below the poverty line” (Kutoma Wakunuma). The human rights concerns surrounding this source of income are nowhere near acceptable, as individuals working within plastic/garbage dumps are not only paid far below livable wage (“Payments of less than 4 pence a kilogram for collecting plastic bottles for recycling”) but they are also exposed to highly toxic and hazardous material, such as “broken glass and syringes [potentially] carrying infectious illnesses.”
To provide some specific examples, “a series of incidents in the Malaysian state of Johor earlier this year, around 4,000 residents developed mysterious ailments which were later linked to the dumping of toxic factory waste into Sungai Kim River. Nearby, 111 schools had to be temporarily closed.” Similarly, The Ganges River in India is one of many examples outlining the effects of this ongoing concern. The river is religiously sacred for Hindus across the globe, with more than 700,000 migrants visiting each year. Due to poor regulatory policy for public and environmental health, the river has been polluted by plastic (both local plastic and overseas dumping and dispersal) and is intensely contaminated by other dangerous compounds that water-borne diseases are a normal occurrence for men, women, and children who bathe in it.
Connecting the Dots
According to the global brand audit report from 2018, Big-Food crops remain responsible for the majority of the world’s single-use plastic pollution. For example, “Nestlé uses 1.7 million tones of plastic annually, and nearly 98% of Nestlé’s products are sold in single-use packaging, making it third in the list of top plastic polluters globally.” Given that plastic waste continues to increase from Nestlé, despite efficiencies being gained in the industrial agriculture sector, scenarios like those in Malaysia and the Ganges River will likely become more common. Additionally, people in peripheral countries will remain at risk due to poor corporate responsibility and environmental policy within core western countries to control plastic garbage outsourcing. Given that a select number of mega-corporations, like Nestlé, possess a high degree of influence over a wide variety of items, their financial, business, and political clout make it extremely difficult for environmental justice advocates to address these corporations’ pitfalls in environmental, social, and corporate responsibility.
In other words, it is difficult for advocates to regulate mega-corporations due to a scale issue. To explain further, Nestlé owns over 2,000 brands, with a range not limited to: bottled water, baby food, cereal, and pet food, making plastic waste nearly impossible to avoid if you shop at a conventional supermarket. So, the common questions are, where should plastic-free advocates start, and which item(s) should advocates tackle first? Is utilizing social pressure from environmental advocates the most reliable way to make a difference quickly, or would changes to law and policy be more effective?
Proposed Solutions
If the solution to shifting to a plastic-free society were clear and simple, we wouldn’t be in such a complex and adverse situation with the current state of our environment and human rights. As such, there are a variety of proposed solutions that range from local changes to international ones. Please note that the propositions are not limited to the ones mentioned in this paper.
Local Solutions: To start with what green-minded consumers can do to decrease their involvement in the world’s plastic crisis, and thus, participation in local and international Environmental Justice concerns, Jessica Marshall, and Martha Bebinger both explain their takeaways from their attempt at shopping plastic free.
Jessica: Jessica, found that plastic packaging solutions are best solved by minimizing participation in a global food-system economy and settling for a local one. Although it is somewhat naive to think that the global food industry will somehow find a way to pursue economic degrowth for the sake of reducing plastic waste, it does not mean that the potential to create micro food-system economies managed by communities is off the table. Jessica interviewed Reuben Deumling, a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, and found that his experience with local shopping was easier than expected. Rueben “buys produce and eggs at farmers' markets.” He buys bulk food extensively, ordering 20-pound bags of pasta and dry beans through wholesalers. He also tries to shop at stores that sell liquids like soy sauce, oil, or detergent in bulk and takes them home in reusable containers.
Martha: After her experience attempting to buy plastic-free, Martha posited that she would suggest making items from scratch, if possible, to avoid the need to buy the items at grocery stores (hummus, salsa, yogurt, etc). Also, she suggested switching brands if there is a glass container equivalent (if you could afford to do so). Like Jessica, Martha is also a proponent of bulk buying and recommended that purchasing glass jars to store bulk food items long-term could prove useful.
Law and Policy Solutions (what has already been done):
Given these notable effects on human health, the clear intersections with environmental justice, and the lack of corporate justification for plastic use, some countries have chosen to strengthen policy that incentivizes plastic reduction by shifting waste disposal responsibility from the public to the manufacturer, such as Germany’s Green-dot program. Under this change, Germany reduced plastic waste by 47% in 14 years. Following the program’s success, other European countries have adopted the European Packaging Directive, used a similar model, and produced significant improvements.
Recently, many countries have been attempting to double down on avoiding the “pointless plastic” scenario seen in supermarkets around the world. For example, as of January 1st of 2022, France adopted a ban “on the sale of approximately 30 types of fruits and vegetables.” Furthermore, this ban also extends itself to preventing plastic bags for newspaper delivery, preventing plastic labels/stickers on fruit, ensuring the production of biodegradable tea sachets, and requiring that water fountains are present in popular public areas to avoid the need to purchase plastic water bottles.
To address the concern of disproportional toxic exposure of marginalized communities, many claim that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which is supposed to ensure that marginalized communities are not adversely affected by pollution and waste treatment facilities, is simply not doing enough. According to the Center for Public Integrity, many find that complaints about hazardous material and pollution are left unanswered, and if they are answered, most of the requests are rejected. Many rejections are due to the fact that the individuals sending complaints are “required to have knowledge of civil-rights law and other nuances before filing a case” which is an unfair burden to place on marginalized communities, who typically do not have resources for higher education due to deep-rooted systemic issues within society and academic institutions. As such, serious reform is needed within agencies like the EPA in addition to improving building and zoning guidelines to prevent marginalized communities from receiving unjust treatment through exposure to a harmful environment.
Alternative Plastics: Lastly, the relevance of alternative plastic packaging utilizing biodegradable materials has seen an increase in popularity in recent years. Plenty of research has been done on utilizing fungi as a source for such a concept. Mycelium is a fibrous component of fungus that has the capacity to grow into different geometric molds without sacrificing structural integrity, making them an ideal alternative to plastic. Furthermore, many start-ups have taken advantage of this research, such as “Mushroom®,” which has successfully developed a “replacement for Styrofoam and is available in both the U.S. and Europe.” The difficult aspect now is determining if this can be successfully implemented on a large scale and to make the process cheaper than standard plastic packaging methods so that Big-Food corporations can adopt this technology while continuing to grow economically. Hypothetically, standardizing alternative biodegradables would prevent a large degree of public health and environmental damage from continuing.
Conclusion
Although the socio-environmental effects of plastic use are known and significant, consumers should realize that the transition away from plastic is difficult because the global food economy is deeply rooted in Capitalist and Fordist ideologies. Plastic, as it is currently produced, is cheap and provides a reliable way to store and transport produce across the world. Furthermore, plastic use has become a staple of modern life. We interact with plastic every day, and it has become so normal that we often use it unnecessarily. Due to an intense saturation of plastic use in the global food economy and the lack of accountability placed on the industries producing and utilizing plastic, the burden of responsible disposal has fallen into the laps of consumers by default, despite high recycling costs and lack of plastic free options offered in supermarkets. These burdens have increased plastic pollution across the world and have affected marginalized communities (people of color, low-income communities, women, and children) more significantly than white affluent communities, who can afford to live in areas where pollution does not pose a threat to their local environments or their bodies. Given the complexity of this issue: a growing food system economy due to Capitalism and Fordism, the range of communities and demographics affected, and the range of poor policy implementation to hold industries accountable on the local, national, and international levels, there is no clear-cut solution to reducing plastic in the supermarkets, and thus, reducing the negative socio-environmental impacts of poor disposal.
As such, a mixture of multiple solutions may be necessary. Local solutions, like changing consumer behaviors when shopping (i.e.: buying local, making food from scratch, buying in bulk, etc.) are important as they may question the attitudes, values, and beliefs that consumers have towards plastic in the items they purchase. A consumer who may have walked into a supermarket blindly may one day become more cognizant of the impacts their purchasing choices have — helping society reduce plastic consumption from a bottom-up approach. Furthermore, law and policy solutions to hold industries accountable instead of consumers are also necessary. At the end of the day, consumers are offered little choices when it comes to plastic-free shopping, as verified by Jessica and Martha. The reality is that most consumers are willing to purchase plastic-free items if it is affordable and convenient. Therefore, changing the infrastructure of how the global food economy transports its produce and keeping industries accountable and responsible for both production and disposal of their plastic use, may help eliminate a large degree of global plastic pollution and aid consumers by relieving them of burdens they can’t bear due to financial and accessibility concerns. Additionally, law and policy that restructures building and zoning codes to ensure all demographics are safe from the effects of poor waste disposal is a must from a human rights and environmental justice lens. Lastly, alternative biodegradable plastics are a must if the global food system economy wants to maintain growth into the future, without compromising the environment and at-risk communities around the world.
By: Zach Thurston
