It’s time to eliminate needless packaging
Corporations and states are finally starting to get serious about reducing plastic waste; let’s keep this momentum and tackle the biggest culprit — packaging.
This summer, we have seen many successes in reducing unnecessary plastic pollution. Kroger, the largest grocery chain in America, announced that it will phase out single-use plastic bags by 2025. California’s legislature passed a “straws upon request” law, preventing businesses from giving out plastic straws unless a customer directly requests them. Finally, New Jersey’s Gov. Phil Murphy vetoed a law which would have prevented local towns from imposing more than a minor five cent charge per plastic bag. Instead, he called for a more stringent and effective law to reduce these plastics that pollute our waterways and oceans. Not only do these steps diminish plastic pollution, which kills wildlife and releases toxins into our environment, but they can also encourage innovative replacements, increasing the potential for a zero waste society.
That is really exciting.
While it’s important to applaud these positive steps for reduction of single-use plastics, we also need to recognize that they only tackle a portion of our plastic pollution problem. We need to make more progress, especially when it comes to packaging.
Picture a tube of toothpaste. The tube itself is made of a plastic casing, and that plastic casing often comes in a small box, which is also covered in plastic. That’s just the packaging you see on the shelf. All those little boxes wrapped in plastic probably arrived at the store in bigger boxes wrapped in — you guessed it — plastic.
This story isn’t unique to toothpaste tubes. It’s commonplace in our society for many products. In 2015, 42 percent of plastic produced was for packaging, and with the introduction and expansion of home-delivery services, it could go even higher.
American consumers have little control over packaging compared to in some other countries. For example, in Germany, for several decades, their Packaging Ordinance has required manufacturers to contribute to the cost of recovery and recycling for the packaging they use. Traditionally, manufacturers contract waste management services to collect designated packaging from households or drop-off sites (trademarked with a specified yellow bin), and the manufacturers are responsible for recycling or disposing it. Just like consumers and small businesses, manufacturers don’t want to deal with heaping piles of packaging waste, so they’re incentivized to reduce it.
Meanwhile, the United States has no federal laws restricting excessive use of packaging, and no recycling or waste reduction targets. The progress at the local and state levels, as well as corporate decisions, shows that this is an issue people are responding to, and that simply hoping for a federal law isn’t enough (even if it would go a long way to addressing the problem). I encourage states to continue their efforts in banning the plastics we can go without, and implementing incentives like the German Packaging Ordinance to reduce other plastics. Let’s bring an end to needless waste. We can start with our toothpaste.
