As Kermit the Frog said, “It ain’t easy being green.”  We mentioned in a previous blog, food is the major component of municipal solid waste, but packaging is in mix and subject to different decomposition outcomes. What is coming out of the current Sustainable Packaging Coalition meeting is recognition of the complexity of the issue. Now it is not just the carbon footprint but the gas creation of biodegradable packaging that is rising as an issue. Methane can be captured and reused but carbon based packaging lasts in the landfill indefinitely.

Dead zone Gulf of Mexico 2006

The problem is that carbon is only one issue in being green. The list moves from carbon footprint to methane creation to water usage and it starts to get complicated. Most current plastic film comes from petroleum, ie carbon. Some comes from renewable sources, PLA (corn) and sugar cane, or cellulose (wood). For these the carbon may be less, but is not necessarily, because most fertilizer to grow crops comes from petroleum. Studies suggest that for one calorie of corn-based ethanol, it takes 1.2 calories of petroleum to create. The nitrogen and phosphorus loading that flows through our major rivers to the Gulf of Mexico has created a dead zone in the Gulf  of Mexico that is visible from space. Similar but different issues exist when one looks at cellulose (wood based materials) for water and energy use to process the wood into cellulose. In a recent Business Week article, International Paper documents its efforts to reduce both water and energy use. IP managed to reduce energy consumption by 21% in its processing.  Its virtue is rewarded by  annual savings of $221 million in 2010 terms.

All of this is great progress, but changing processes needs to be accompanied by an understanding of the new impacts that are created. Process change also needs to be flexible, because more change will occur as research offers new packaging possibilities. Meanwhile the goal needs to be to keep things out of the landfill.