Food Packaging(scanofthemonth.com) |
Food Packaging(scanofthemonth.com) |
I re-use jam jars for food storage, drinking glasses, mini herb gardens, etc. and could incorporate bottles, jars, and other glass containers into a variety of needs around the house if they were designed with second and third lives in mind.
Add in health effects of microplastics/chemical leaching and glass is again a winner.
Transportation costs and breakage are perhaps higher, but maybe that’s a cost we should accept?
I suspect that transportation and breakage costs are higher only because we don't account for externalities when considering plastic: in other words producers don't sustain the full costs and are effectively subsidized by the society at large and the environment (through increased healthcare spending, lower QOL, higher obesity rates, lower fertility, and other environmental costs that will be sustained by future generations).
There are externalities with glass too (think shattered bottles in public spaces) but my feeling is they’re fewer and less earth-destroying.
For reference, I assume you mean a bottle scraper here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottle_scraper
They're not specifically intended for condiments (most jam jars are low and wide enough that they can be scraped with a spoon), but for storing more viscous liquids in larger glass (milk) bottles, like yoghurt or vla.
Interestingly that bag wasn't sloppy or wobbly at all, because on one side it had a handle, which felt like it was inflated with something, which made it stiff. Still one time use only, though less material.
Standardized glass containers would be useful, although in some ways already exist (mason jars usually accept common lids, for instance).
What we need is a shift in mentality away from a plastic-first approach.
“I’ve got one word for you kid: glass.”
Solving the leaky bottle upside down problem is too narrow a focus.
Cardboard, it's origami for industry: sheet form, now optimise assembly, cost and structural integrity alongside ease of production...
"The Package Design Book", "Structural Package Design" and "Complex Packaging" via https://mobile.twitter.com/robin7331/status/1484442902050881...
Single use wooden items don’t cause flooding and damage wildlife.
These are not the same. They don’t have the same problems.
Sriracha Bottle Cap: it's a fun design, but in my experience it tends to turn filthy, sticky and basically break. Kind of terrible, really.
Vita Coco Bottle Cap: okay if it works, very annoying if it doesn't. The whole container is a recycling nightmare, fwiw.
That's was true in an age of raw material abundance where a light and disposable package means less transportation cost, simple infrastructures, less distributed human labor requirements etc. You can pack milk in a factory and directly ship it to stores where the only need is putting them on some supermarket shelf. In the past there is a need for glass bottles who are fragile and heavyweight, they need to be cleaned up, there is an industry to wash/recycle them, many stages in line etc...
The result of modern food packaging is that we are able to concentrate stuff, few big factories in exotic places, more products on shelves, cheaper product. However now we start seeing that such efficient move is not sustainable... I bet in the future we will came back somewhat, and such move will hurt MUCH...
For me, none of them work. And they often seem like an expensive component.
1. Reduce plastic consumption as much as you can. 2. Use reusable bags 3. Choose packaging that contains less plastic. This is truly horrible in the US. Apple sauce containers for kids have so much unnecessary plastic. I mean the ones with the fancy caps that are big only to appeal to kids.
And to reduce your carbon footprint further - controversial point incoming - reduce or stop eating meat.
“But, aren’t you using a smartphone? Do you not buy X? Do you not use X? Do you drive? Do you travel? … All your points are therefore invalid“
When I’m hungry and someone offers a slice of pizza I don’t say no if I can’t have the entire pie. I take the slice. Start with a step today then take another one tomorrow.
Eventually there will be enough of us that we opt to tax companies at the source for using plastics unnecessarily or having a ridiculous carbon footprint. And May be we can have effective carbon capture technologies and better ways to deal with plastic.
Plenty of us do, but industry lobbying is so far stronger:
https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/news/plastics-industry-contin...
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/government...
idk how they went from 3d data to those images, I'd imagine whatever scanning software they use exports a lot of frames
and then you can put those frames together in something like after effects and just export a gif
use wappalyzer extension to figure it technologies in the future
Yeah but the biggest effort went into making it cheap.
Does anyone know how they monetize this page? Or is it just a hobby project?
Is the hardware and software needed for CT scans really that expensive or not?
and a bonus if the planet can support great-grandchildren. At the moment, that is no longer a given.
Is there really another "first-world" country on earth with healthcare broken like it is in the US?
https://www.courant.com/la-fi-ct-scanners-20180730-story.htm...
Naturally it‘s free if a doctor decides you need one.
The other is an institutional monopoly that, while initially set up with lofty goals to save lives, has devolved into a suppressive tool that works against the common man.
X-rays are quite cheap in the medical world (reading them is where the cost is, not taking the x-ray).
It's been proven time after time that we won't reduce emissions by appealing to the social conscience of people and corporations, but everybody obeys economic measures.
I don't know about the recyclability of those plastics, but I wouldn't be surprised. They're basically two pieces of plastic screwed together without any seal, and it works well enough!
http://flyosity.com/design/ketchup-bottles-the-physicality-o...
That's why it appears in the scan.
There are no science-based projections of us not being able to support human life with a population of less than 100 million still in 200 years.
Technically, one can also get a (simple) 3D model of something with 'linear tomography', e.g. when the 'sample' is moved under the x-ray source, which happens in classic baggage scanners.
Mostly for your own sake I mean. But if you do find out then please let us know too :)
Burying is not the same as being thrown in the ocean, or ripped into little pieces and thrown on the ground.
Burying would likely keep plastic in the immediate vicinity, and we have another tool to add. Bacteria.
There are bacteria which eat plastic. If we could find some anaerobic ones, burying might work quite well.
Of course I guess that leaves the carbon free again, unless...
We find or engineer bacteria which produce a great precursor, to make plastic!
It would be a strange outcome, if plastic became fully renewable.
AFAIK its paper, sure but laminated with aluminum and plastic so good luck separating the layers into recyclable stuff.
Not that recycling is a panacea in the first place… more like a gimmick to make us feel good about wasting so much instead of questioning the methods of the industries producing all the waste in the first place.
Edit: I know this isn't true for every glass bottle, but it happens. There are one way glass bottles in .de
Which you still have to return, to get the 8 or 15 cents(don't know exactly) back if you care.
But all in all, this system definitely ensures at least a big part of German bottles are actually reused multiple times.
Edit: where the kegs/canisters take the part of standardized liquid containers, as it is common in gastronomy already?
Just need to have a machine which can do the refills from store to longlife bottle quickly and clean at the store.
Editedit: Trying a braindump, from my impressions over the past decades, even long before "Grüner Punkt" and other return systems, just regarding bottles.
In larger supermarkets, and stores specializing in selling bottled stuff, there are always large areas for the returns, inside and outside. All for gathering and storing that stuff, to send it back to whereever and whenever. Sometimes with larger forklifts, stacking pallets/boxes 3 storeys high. (about 9 to 12 pallets, or boxes)
This is the cult of the bottle! Make work!
But needlessly bombarding it with artificial chemicals surely has some kind of threshold over which adaptation mostly fails, equilibria get destroyed and the system becomes indeed instable.
> ... as long as it isn't disrupting ecosystems.
Problem is, who can reliably tell when it'll be too much?
IMO not worth risking "everything" for some added convenience of "ingenious" food packaging.
The point is that from a human perspective, and from the perspective of most multicellular organisms, plastics discarded into the environment are a really bad thing for our health.
Since all life forms on earth rely heavily on water as solvent (being present ideally all the time), those 'invasive' bacteria won't have that much of an effect on humanity's habits IMHO, since regularly removing the water easily keeps their impact low.
Fungi might play an important role in decomposition of plastics as well, since they have advantages over bacteria that may be relevant for decomposition of plastics in the same way in which they are for decomposing wood. (Which is difficult for bacteria)
Indeed. It doesn't mean either the US or the Swiss aren't getting gouged when it comes to health prices (and prices in general in CH).
But yes, AFAIK, there is no minimum wage in CH but the defacto minimum wage hovers around 50--60k CHF a year and 20 or 25 days PTO. On the other hand, health insurance alone with a 2500 CHF deductible and 10% copay afterwards costs 300--400 CHF a month no problem.
You say this like it is a good thing. Do folks at the bottom third have to endure the same sort of poverty, earning wages their parents earned yet paying more for everything?
Oh, I'm guessing you just mean folks that are in certain fields, and that really isn't representative of US wages. Normal folks are pretty poor.
If instead of normalising the use of reusable bags, we normalised soft plastics (LDPE) recycling, the planet would probably be in a better condition. A one cent tax per bag would probably be sufficient to pay for it.
(And don't get me started about cotton. If you only focus on climate change, cotton isn't too bad. But if you zoom out to look at environmental impact, petroleum doesn't hold a candle to cotton for the devastation of natural habitat, water use, energy use, etc etc etc. One t-shirt or tote bag is likely more environmental impact than all of the soft plastics used by one person in a year.)
There's plenty of other studies. Just search for life cycle analysis of grocery bags or similar on Google Scholar.
[0]: https://backend.orbit.dtu.dk/ws/portalfiles/portal/151577434...
I’m not a fan on indiscriminate use of petroleum products but I really think people underestimate just how thin a single use bag is. Next time you finish a plastic bottle of milk or juice, weigh the container and see how many single use bags it takes to match that weight.
Single use plastic bags are a problem, but like plastic straws, they’re not even in the top 100 of culprits. People pick on them because they’re easy and because they’re symbolic.
My state recently started charging for bags. Guess what? People carry groceries in their hands when possible. Many bring their own bag plastic reusable bags.
It’s not just the energy required to create them. It’s that they’re virtually indestructible. They litter. They fly away. They break and leak plastic everywhere in the environment leading to microplastic found in blood of wildlife.
And this is just scratching the surface. I know it sounds like an educated view and it’s not entirely wrong but there’s more to it than what appears. Plastic is a problem and the less of it we use the better we and our next generations will be.
No, I did not. It was pretty value neutral.
> Oh, I'm guessing you just mean folks that are in certain fields
I guess it was a bit roundabout. The USA being the USA, people are often severely underpaid, which does not seem to be the case in Switzerland. But considering where we are, I mean tech salaries, which are pretty high.
I've thought about the carbonizing thing. Let's say there are glass cylinders of common sizes and proportions, made out of light, and nearly indestructible laboratory glassware. Everybody has a few of them, like knife, fork and spoon, kitchenware, and so on. Why not have the cylinder open on the top, with a screw thread?
Several sorts of caps precisely fitting onto that thread, sealed when latched on? Then there could be a module like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codd-neck_bottle for anything sparkling as the 'cap' being screwed and latched onto that cylinder. As one of many options. Think bottle lego! :-)
As for the branding, consumer information? Some sort of e-paper, or some RFID with a little bit of storage would surely do? (Also modular, so you can either change it, without throwing away the base bottle in case of defect, or vice versa. Because shit always happens)
Edit: Thinking further about it, It vaguely seems this could also be applied to most stuff which ships in tin cans. Like soups, Ravioli, and so on.
Editedit: Regarding the large facility...These already exist for baking pre-baked stuff, so you have the illusion of freshness.
It could also save a massive amount of store space because there could be one area with all sorts of filling stations, with the canisters plugged in behind the scenes. Instead of having rows of rows of stacked bottles or tin cans which need to be restocked continuosly.
Regarding deliveries, could be similar. All the "ghost kitchens' having such systems, filling those common containers with their common caps, from a common pool.
The small modular bottles for consumers just shuttling back and forth locally/regionally in that pool, while the larger ones only making it back and forth between delivery hubs and producers. No matter if Supermarket or delivery from some 'ghost kitchen'.
Phew! I'll leave it at that :-)
Editeditedit: Err, nope! Can't stop! Cold Plasma like in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonthermal_plasma for disinfection! (Maybe)
Actually I’ve seen this at one or two upscale supermarkets. They had a larger filling station for cereal, candy and other dry goods but it wasn’t the supermarket itself that sold those. Similar to an in-store “Unverpackt-Laden” (no packaging store).
In my opinion it would be more realistic to start out with dry goods to save emissions. The German bottling system is not so bad to begin with and could be improved later.