Is a new thing always better than the old thing it replaces? Is everything new always better than anything old? Before you answer, consider the current push to replace single-use plastic food packaging with reusable alternatives made of glass, aluminum, and so forth. Whether you know it or not, the concept perfectly illustrates the idea of going back to an older way of doing things.
Few would argue that single-use food packaging made of plastic is not such a great idea. It is cheap to produce, but that’s about it. Single-use plastic packaging is hard to recycle, so it ends up in landfills or incinerators instead. What doesn’t make it into a proper disposal stream pollutes both land and water. Thus, eliminating our dependence on it would be a good thing all the way around.
Milk Delivered to Your Door
Kroger has announced plans to launch a new program aimed at encouraging customers to purchase food in reusable glass containers, beginning in 2022. They will also be offering aluminum boxes for some food items. Customers looking to buy with glass and aluminum will pay a deposit on the containers, then bring empty containers back to the store so they can be cleaned, sanitized, and used again.
While this may seem like a revolutionary new thing, it is not. There was a day when you could not buy milk in plastic jugs or paper cartons. Milk was delivered to your door in glass bottles. Empty glass bottles were left out for the milkman to take, clean and sanitize, and refill.
As late as the 1990s, you could still buy milk in glass bottles. It was the same kind of thing. You would return empty bottles to the dairy. The dairy would continually clean, sanitize, and refill them until they ultimately broke. So Kroger isn’t trying something new. They are actually going back to the old way of doing things.
Recycling Only Goes So Far
So what is inspiring this push to reduce single-use plastic food packaging? The understanding that recycling only goes so far. When it comes to post-industrial plastics, recycling is efficient and cost-effective. Companies like Seraphim Plastics have been successfully doing so for years. But recycling post-consumer plastics is another ballgame entirely.
Seraphim can make money on industrial plastics because those plastics are ‘clean’. On the other hand, commercial plastics are mixed plastics. It is a lot harder to make money on recycling when you have to separate and decontaminate plastic waste before you can do anything else with it.
The reality is that commercial paper recycling gary in post-consumer plastics just doesn’t work. There is no way to do it cost-effectively. So the only other way to reduce the volume of such plastics in the waste stream is to stop using them. That is where reusable glass and aluminum come into play.
The Old Way Is Better
Returning to glass and aluminum food containers seems to suggest that the old way is better – at least in this one area. Using glass bottles is more work, but it keeps a lot of plastic out of the waste stream. Ditto for aluminum food boxes. Ditto again for refillable coffee mugs, reusable fabric grocery bags, and on and on.
Maybe this push to eliminate single-use food packaging will cause us to rethink some of the other new things we do. Perhaps this is the start of a fresh recognition that the old ways are not all bad. Some of them are actually good. In the future, perhaps we will not be so ready to accept new things as being better without thoroughly thinking them through.