The Problem With Food

Stone Guise

Brandon Schlecht

Thomson Kirsch

Max Zheng

The Problem With Food

In todays world, most people misjudge the amount of waste they produce. Our class conducted a project in which we recorded our trash consumption for a week and took pictures of litter that we found. Most of what we consumed and found was related to food waste. Our consumer society makes waste, especially food waste incredibly common. It is so common that our world is on the brink of an ecological disaster.

After looking at the pictures again, the realisation occurred that over fifty percent of the waste could be considered food waste. This food waste includes beer bottles, an untouched goldfish cracker bag, and even the infamous red solo cup. For the first few days of the project we had a problem finding litter, but as the weekend approached, it became easier to find the food waste. After talking about the pictures on instagram, our group decided that there was more waste on the weekends, rather than the weekdays, because of how late people stay up and the parties. At parties, people often don’t know where the trash is, so they decide to litter. Also on the weekends is when the dining hall doesn’t have late night dining. Causing students to buy more food that has packaging. They eat the food and then dispose of the packaging in the most convenient way possible, usually on the ground on the way to a party. Another problem with the food waste that we found was the amount of packaging that we found. A lot of the packaging from companies is impossible to compost or recycle. Instead of being environmentally sound and making packaging one hundred percent paper or aluminium, companies decided to mix these two products, making them impossible to recycle which then produces more waste.

The multiple images of trash packaging found in just one week of doing litterati was shocking. This shows a large problem in our society. We are consumers, and we must eat, therefore we buy all sorts of food. However all of this food comes packaged in some way or another, and this packaging is rarely compostable or recyclable. Most of it ends up in the landfill, or in the case of litterati, on the streets. Producers are packaging their food products with more and more trash that will end up in the landfill. They do this in order to sell more of the product as more packaging is appealing to a consumer, the more eloquent the packaging the more appealing the product is, and eloquent packaging is made up of more waste. Susan Strasser stated that “Decades before Kotex, throwaway packaging was promoted for its convenience and cleanliness.” (Strasser 171), and we as a society have come to see extensive packaging around an object as a sign of its quality, as well as its convenience of use. Producers are only out to make a profit. There are a few easy solutions that could be made to the issue of food packaging. One simply being to use less packaging, something a few companies have already adopted. For example Morning Thunder tea advertises how their tea bags are not wrapped individually, this greatly decreases the trash created by the product. Although many companies will refuse to make this change, if they did it would greatly reduce this issue. Another solution to the issue would be to make more packaging with compostable products. Like the compostable cups, napkins, and forks; food manufacturers should also be able to do this. Another solution would be making packaging out of recyclable materials. Many companies already do this as they use cardboard, however a large majority of the pictures of food packaging trash on instagram, were not recyclable materials. For example there was a picture of a Goldfish bag, which may seem recyclable, but is not. The bag is lined with a material on the inside that turns an otherwise recyclable bag, into a landfill item.The last solution that we as the consumer could do to help this issue is to change where we shop. If we shop at smaller markets or farmers markets the food often comes in little to no packaging. Although some products must be bought from the over packaged supermarkets, even buying just your fruits and veggies from a farmers market could make a difference.