Frito Lay *compostable* bag a disaster - let's learn from it

Last January the fast-food giant Frito Lay (owned by Pepsico) introduced what it claimed was a compostable chip bag. This would have been good news. It makes great sense to package food in compostable wrappings. But things went terribly wrong.

First of all, the bags aren't actually compostable. The award-winning Durham ON composting program expressly prohibits "compostable chip bags" from its green composting bins.

Second, the bags aren't recyclable either. What little biodegradable property they do have would foul up the works if they ended up in a recycled product. So that will cause problems in the Canada-wide "harmonized" recycling program for packaging proposed by the Canadian Council of Ministers of Environment. The CCME plan expressly lumps all packaging together in one regulatory bag. How will we separate out the recyclable wheat from the compostable chaff in this new program?

And what about the environmental footprint of compostable plastic, compared for instance to alternatives such as compostable paper? Frito Lay claims the bags are made with "renewable, plant-based materials" -- but they provide no information about the energy and other environmental costs of converting the molecules in those materials into plastic.

But these concerns are not why Frito Lay is pulling the bags off the market.

The real problem with the bags, according to a story in today's Wall Street Journal, is that consumers complained that they were too noisy! The WSJ reports that consumers have "lodged fierce complaints on social-networking sites." Worse: sales of the chips are down.

What does this tell us about how far we have strayed from common sense, as we move inexorably towards Peak Oil's day of reckoning?

Packaging included? No. Why not?

It's one of those good news/bad news stories...

The good news is that the Liberal government inherited a good recycling policy ~Extended Producer Responsibility ~ and made it better.

BC became a world leader in the 1990s for introducing a series of landmark recycling laws. The new laws relieved the poor hapless local governments who have been picking up after the Throw-Away Society at taxpayer expense and put responsiblity right where it belongs, on the producers of the stuff that becomes waste.

This gives the producers an incentive to reduce their waste.

When the Liberal government took power in the early 2000s, they developed a "framework" recycling regulation to replace the collection of stand-alone regulations that had been brought in by earlier governments.

It is a good piece of legislation. It sends a clear signal to all producers of throw-away products that they will be responsible for providing recycling programs for their products. And then it allows the government to move methodically, updating the legislation by adding one product category at a time. The producers have time to organize the programs.

This month the government did just that. It added more categories of electronics products to the regulation, giving the producers 18 months to get programs in place to take back small appliances, toys, radios, cameras and a whole long list of consumer electronic products that were not included in the regulation before. The new products are spelled out in a "schedule" in the regulation.

But the bad news is that the Liberal government did not include electronics packaging in the regulation, despite the fact that the Recycling Council of BC and others have sent letters urging them to do so.

This means that all the styrofoam, bubble wrap, plastic and cardboard that come in the new equipment you buy to replace the old one has no where to go.

The Liberal government failed to do what NDP Environment Minister Moe Sihota did in 1994, when his government oversaw the roll-out of a new regulation that required paint companies to take back old paint.

The paint companies tried to avoid taking back paint cans and pails, claiming that it wasn't their responsibility. Sihota simply amended the regulation so that it covered the paint packaging as well as the leftover paint. Today, the paint industry recycles tonnes of cans and pails as well as old paint. They don't like it much, but maybe that will prompt them to come up with containers that are refillable? easier to recycle?

Write to the Premier (mailto:Premier@gov.bc.ca) and ask:

Why wasn't packaging for electronics products included in the amended Recycling Regulation?

Stop cleaning up after the Throw-Away Society

Today I overheard two strangers talking about how much they hate all the excess packaging that comes on the products they buy. Wouldn't they be surprised to know they were subsidizing it with their tax dollars?

According to the US federal government (which tracks these things) packaging has increased 51% since 1980. And that understates the real impact. Consider how packaging has changed in the past 26 years.

You can fit 600 pounds of old-fashioned glass bottles and jars in a box one cubic yard in size. To handle a comparable weight in plastic bottles and jars, you need a box 16 times bigger. With the increase in packaging, that means we need a box 24 times bigger. Twenty-four times more garbage trucks, 24 times more landfill space... and that's just for the packaging. Throw-away products have increased 86% over the same period. Three times the rate of population growth.

The cost of dealing with all that waste falls squarely on local communities. It's up to us to build the landfills, finance the incinerators, and provide the convenient weekly collection to which we have all become accustomed.

But finance it we have. A report being circulated by Metro Vancouver reminds us that in our country $1.5 billion was spent by municipal governments in 2000 on solid waste management. That cost was offset by a mere $97 million in recycling revenues.

That's over $1.4 billion public dollars spent in a single year to subsidize the producers of excess packaging and throw-away products.

The companies that profit from these subsidies will be sending their big guns to Vancouver this week to participate in an invitation-only Packaging Symposium organized by Metro Vancouver.

They will be happy to hear about Metro Vancouver's draft waste management plan, which will give them a big boost.

The region's plan requires our municipal governments to spend more to recycle plastic packaging (even though there are no markets for the material). And the rest that can't be recycled? We'll build big burners and pump it up into the atmosphere.

Infrastructure that locks in waste.

(The report mentioned above was penned for the Federation of Canadian Municipalities by RIS, the Ontario consulting firm that works closely with the producers of throw-away products and packaging.)

pic: Geotastic

How much styrofoam did Santa bring you this year?

If your post-holiday garbage is packed solid with "styrofoam" (aka expanded polystyrene, or EPS), you'll be encouraged by the following notes that crossed my desk today.

The Wisconsin State Journal ran a story about a retailer who figured 80% of his waste was styrofoam. He purchased a simple machine that cuts the big blocks of foam into chips that can be reused as loose-fill styrofoam "peanuts."

In September, New Scientist published a story about a patent application from some Chinese scientists who have developed a new way of making styrofoam so it melts away in water when you're done with it.

Will these be the breakthroughs that solve our styrofoam problem? Probably not. Solutions have come and gone for years.

The fact is, the companies that use styrofoam packaging are not looking for a breakthrough ~ because THEY don't have a problem.

From the electronic manufacturers' point of view, that styrofoam is a solution, not a problem ~ it protects their products from breakage during shipment.

It's only after the products are sold to the consumer that styrofoam morphs into a problem, filling your garbage can and your community's landfill.

And the electronics companies are not likely to give you any help dealing with your styrofoam ~ unless they have to. Which is what "Extended Producer Responsibility" is all about.

This is the new paradigm: if you sell a product, you're responsible for recycling it, cradle-to-cradle. That includes both the product and the packaging.

Once the producers have to deal with their waste, solutions happen.

Instead, what do we do? We put THEIR styrofoam in the garbage where it costs US money. Metro Vancouver is looking at half a billion dollars in capital costs over the next few years to build all those fancy waste incinerators that will vaporize plastics into the atmosphere.

It's our choice: build incinerators, or use the law to compel producers to design products and packaing responsibly so there will be no hidden social or environmental costs.

This is going to be an exciting year!