Asklemmy

43945 readers

540 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

160

How do we package food products sustainably in coming decades? (lemmy.world)

submitted 7 months ago by j4k3@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

99 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I imagine all plastics will be out of the question. I'm wondering about what ways food packaging might become regulated to upcycling in the domestic or even commercial space. Assuming energy remains a $ scarce $ commodity I don't imagine recycling glass will be super practical as a replacement. Do we move to more unpackaged goods and bring our own containers to fill at markets? Do we start running two way logistics chains where a more durable glass container is bought and returned to market? How do we achieve a lower energy state of normal in packaging goods?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] stoy@lemmy.zip 12 points 7 months ago

Why do we need the expense of returning glass bottles for washing and reuse, when glass recycling works and is much cheaper?

Consider simply the energy use...

Heating up water to high preassure steam to sterilize bottles uses way less energy than it takes to melt glass, keep it at the correct temperature, reform the bottle, letting it cool slowly (to prevent cracking) and steam clean it before filling the new bottle.

If anything we will see a new focus on the "reuse" part of the "reduce, reuse, recyle" process.

There is a reson as to why the verbs in the process are ordered in that way...

The most environmentally friendly action, is to reduce our consumption of materials, if that is not possible, then we should reuse the finnished product for as long as possible, if that is not possible, then we should recycle the materials into a new and better product rather than digging up more materieal.