Green Packaging: Are Potatoes, Coconuts And Mushrooms The Way Of The Future? (PHOTOS)

Does seeing all that plastic packaging going in the trash every time you eat make you feel guilty? There are innovators out there who want to change that.

Using cutting edge technology, or just pulling from tradition, these companies and individuals are trying to reduce the chemicals used in our packaging, and the waste going in the landfill.

Do you think these ideas are the way of the future, or just plain garbage? Vote for you favorite, and let us know what you think in the comments.

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Potato Peelings

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SunChips may have given up on its annoyingly loud compostable bags, but its parent company, Pepsi-Co, is already hard at work on an initiative for its Walkers chip bags. Walkers, which sells in the UK, is looking at using starch from unused potato peels to create a more eco-friendly packet. Some of Walkers’ smaller brands may be in the new packaging within 18 months. The initiative is part of the Carbon Trust’s Carbon Reduction Label initiative. Walkers claims it has already cut the carbon footprint of its packaging by eight percent.

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SunChips may have given up on its annoyingly loud compostable bags, but its parent company, Pepsi-Co, is already hard at work on an initiative for its Walkers chip bags. Walkers, which sells in the UK, is looking at using starch from unused potato peels to create a more eco-friendly packet. Some of Walkers’ smaller brands may be in the new packaging within 18 months.

The initiative is part of the Carbon Trust’s Carbon Reduction Label initiative. Walkers claims it has already cut the carbon footprint of its packaging by eight percent.

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Comments

[Leah Tedesco]

01:22 PM on 11/24/2010

Milk protein? It's cruel and environmentally counterproductive to use animal products.

[cccoyote]

02:47 AM on 11/18/2010

And they completely ignored hemp which once had many uses.

just came across this. I knew they made dash pads, visors and door panels out of hemp:

Hemp and flax for building cars is not new. It was actually done in the USA by Henry Ford while hemp was legal in 1941. The experimental model's body was seventy percent made of fibers from field straw, cotton fibers, hemp, and flax. The other 30 percent consisted of soy meal and bio-resin fillers.

Ford's successful prototype was tagged as the vegetable or hemp car.

Ford's motivation was green-based for two reasons. He wanted to increase agricultural involvement for materials in the automotive industry to improve the farmers' economic plight. And he wanted to build lighter, stronger cars with better fuel efficiency.

The car weighed 2000 pounds compared to 3000 pounds for similar all-steel automobiles. In 1941, ethanol had a higher octane and was cheaper to produce than gasoline. Ford designed the car to run on partial or complete ethanol fuels.

But steel and oil magnates lobbied government to ensure Ford's vision would never manifest.

[EcoCatLady]

03:17 PM on 11/17/2010

I'm all for reducing petroleum based packaging and finding good uses for waste materials, but it seems to me that a better solution would be to change our cultural mindset about packaging and disposability. As I write this I'm tearing a plastic wrapper off a roll of duct tape. Can somebody please explain to me why my duct tape needs to be hermetically sealed in plastic?

[FreeHat]

03:59 PM on 11/17/2010

Yes I can. It has to do with all the litigation available in the US. Antidote is known as tort reform.

[jsarets]

01:34 AM on 11/18/2010

Well, the sides of the duct tape rolls are sticky, which can accumulate dust and such, but I suppose that could be solved by sticking something to the sides of the rolls. Duct tape, for example...

[Paul Gray]

02:04 PM on 11/17/2010

when you are talking about food you should not post a photo of "amanita" type mushrooms. at best they are inedible and at worst they are deadly.

[FreeHat]

04:00 PM on 11/17/2010

Touche turtle! Might not want to eat him either, unless it's a soup.

[jimboy71]

12:37 PM on 11/17/2010

I hate the expression "chai tea". Chai is tea, and vice versa. Our english word "tea" is a corruption of "chai".

[sabelmouse]

12:48 PM on 11/17/2010

on the other hand chai also means a certain spicy tea that is different from our ordinary tea.

[FreeHat]

04:03 PM on 11/17/2010

meh, it's the difference between a venti and a grande. What happened to 16 oz or 22 oz? i know I like my bud light 24 oz cans.

[Iwpach]

12:17 PM on 11/17/2010

I think Kudzu could be used for some of this stuff too.
It nearly swallows up entire sections of the Southeastern United States most every summer.

[AntonioVTorres]

11:20 AM on 11/17/2010

I always felt the worst thing Sun Chips did was cave into the pressure regarding the "loud" bags. But, I think many people knew cellulose paper was the future after seeing it used as joint paper for rolling marijuana in the form of Aleda/Aledinha. Then, I forget who, someone used the same cellulose to wrap their CDs or DVDs for sale. It just has to be refined, not ignored. And, its current utility has a broad range wherever plastic is used.

[FPhoebe]

01:11 PM on 11/17/2010

I am really disappointed in Sun Chips for caving as well. People would have gotten used to it; it's not like it compromised the taste.

[jsarets]

01:28 AM on 11/18/2010

The Sun Chips packaging wasn't paper, cellophane, or anything else made from cellulose. It was a polylactide (PLA) produced from corn syrup by a subsidiary of Cargill (NatureWorks).

This material is "loud" because the structure is amorphous (like glass) due to the mixture of D-lactide and L-lactide monomers in the polylactide chains. The sugar is fermented by bacteria to yield lactic acid, which is catalytically dehydrated into lactide. The catalyst used by NatureWorks doesn't discriminate between the D- and L- stereoisomers of lactide.

Manufacturers in the Netherlands and China are using a newer process that splits the lactic acid over two stereospecific catalysts to produce D-lactide and L-lactide.  These are polymerized separately and then blended back together so that each polylactide molecule in the material is stereospecific.  This yields a substantially crystalline structure which is less "loud" and more tolerant of high temperatures.

[Busbydav]

11:17 AM on 11/17/2010

Id be interested to know what the oxygen and moisture transmission rates are for the Walker's bag. Protection of the product is a packages primary function.

[hoangthuhuyen]

10:35 AM on 11/17/2010

Lotus leaves would be great too, with very soothing smell :)

[jokerdanny]

10:29 AM on 11/17/2010

I'm dying. This is straight out of the movie Night Shift. Michael Keaton's character is a self-proclaimed "idea man" who walks around with a mini-cassette player recording his own ideas during the the day. At one point he has a burger wrapper I think and he flicks on the recorder and says something like , "new idea, edible paper, eat the burger, eat the paper."

[Cookie Monsta]

10:02 AM on 11/17/2010

If mushrooms material biodegrades so easily, even with low oxygen, how does it make a good insulation?

[AntonioVTorres]

11:11 AM on 11/17/2010

I think it's the time frame with which it will degrade. It's like a cotton or wool sweater. It'll last forever if taken care of but if left to the elements of a landfill, it'll biodegrade quickly.

[Bryant Schultz]

09:31 AM on 11/17/2010

Could someone please explain to me what is so "imperfect" about using GMO corn for packaging?

[busfault]

10:58 AM on 11/17/2010

Good question. Likely because it is being used in containing foods. Also, since they are grown in the open it could be possible for the plant to spread. I do find the whole GM thing interesting since humans have been doing it for a LONG LONG time. Maybe not to the extent we are now, but we have been cross pollinating plants and selectively breeding plants for quite some time.

[Busbydav]

11:10 AM on 11/17/2010

It isn't perfect because it is using a food source. This information in the article is a little dated, they can currently use grasses to manufacture PLA.