Food packaging: why the waste? Caroline Stacey Our shopping bags are bulging, bins are overflowing, and we're running out of landfill sites to dispose of it all. We're being swamped by packaging and food packaging is one of the major culprits.

In this article

Reduce Reuse Recycle

Biodegradable Plastic bag blight The bag backlash

Bag-free zones Supermarket targets What you can do

Each year an estimated 6.3 million tonnes of packaging comes into British homes, at a cost of £450 to the average family, says the Government-funded Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP). That's what we're paying for all those unwanted wrappings and containers we have to dispose of.

Food isn't the only culprit, but up to one-sixth of the average household food budget goes on packaging and it makes up a third of our household waste. So, what’s being done (and what can be done) to send packaging packing?

If food-related packing is to be reduced, the three 'R's need to be put into practice. For a start the amount of pointless packaging has to be reduced. Shrink-wrapped swedes and cucumbers, apples in polystyrene trays and tubes of tomato purée in pointless cardboard cartons are examples of unnecessary packaging. Businesses are under Government orders to recycle their packaging waste and now manufacturers and retailers, many of them food producers and supermarkets, have signed up to a voluntary agreement to reduce the amount of packaging used, called the Courtauld Commitment.

It's more economical to put empty containers to another use

It's more economical to put empty containers to another use than it is to recycle them. Glass jars can be used for storage. So can some plastic tubs - for home freezing, for example. Bags can be used until they fall apart - Sainsbury's will even replace your 100 per cent made-from-recycled-materials bag, which costs 10p, for free when it does. But there's a limit to the second chances we can find for all the jars, bottles, cartons and tubs that find their way into our homes, and most will have to be recycled.

Although more than 70 per cent of our household waste could be recycled, in practice we only manage to recycle just under one-third. The rest goes into landfill. We can try to buy food in containers that are easier to recycle - choosing glass, which can be recycled again and again, instead of plastic bottles, for instance. But our glass act also needs cleaning up. The average family gets through 500 glass bottles and jars a year but only 30 per cent are recycled, according to WRAP.

Aluminium is one of the most valuable of recyclable materials. The energy it takes to make one new aluminium can is enough to make 20 recycled ones.

Plastic is a problem. Plastic film, tubs and pots or the sort of punnet in which fruit and meat is sold are not collected for recycling. Although many plastic containers such as PET (polyethylene terephthalate) soft drink bottles and HDPE (high-density polythylene) milk flagons can and are recycled, a shocking 93 per cent of these milk containers are simply thrown out. The bulky empties take 500 years to decompose.

Most of the plastic earmarked for recycling is shipped to China and comes back to us in another form - as toys, for example. Recycled plastic can be used in new packaging, such as plastic bags, to save resources needed to make it from scratch. The economic downturn, however, has greatly reduced the need for recycled plastic. Look for the recycle symbol on packaging. A number inside the triangle of arrows shows the percentage of recyclate (that's recycled material) used to make it.

More and more packaging, including new materials such as polyester-based resin, boasts that it is fully biodegradable or compostable. Either term means it will rot down to become compost.

Great idea as long as it really is composted, but if biodegradable packaging is put in a bin liner with all the other rubbish and ends up in landfill it creates methane gas, which is damaging to the environment.

Plastic: thinner is a winner

Packaging can be reduced by making containers thinner. Wine bottles, for example, vary considerably in weight. If producers moved to lighter bottles, WRAP believes that 100,000 tonnes of glass could be saved a year. Bread, crisps and salad could all be packaged in lighter-gauge plastic, saving tonnes of the stuff every year. Additionally, unnecessary layers of wrapping can be done away with.