Does wrapping food in plastic reduce food waste?

Reducing plastic waste sometimes feels like a puzzle. Wasting food is bad, but preserving it to sell or save often involves wrapping it up in plastic. What’s the right thing to do if we want to waste as little as possible?

When we produce and buy more food than we need, the waste adds up fast. In fact, food waste is a big source of climate pollution. 

But plastic packaging is a big waste problem, too. Every day, Americans throw away enough plastic to fill the country’s largest football stadium to the brim. 

Thin plastic wrappers are essentially unrecyclable. Selling and storing food in these kinds of thin wrappers is all but guaranteed to generate waste or pollution. It ends up feeling like a trade off: Less food waste in exchange for more plastic waste.

But the truth is that buying food already wrapped in plastic may not even be keeping some of our food fresher for longer. 

Wrapping food in plastic does not always reduce waste

Producers wrap food in plastic because our food system is designed to favor products with a long shelf life. But some research shows that wrapping some kinds of uncut fresh produce in plastic doesn’t actually improve the shelf life of fruits and vegetables.

We need to rethink the way our food is produced and sold. Getting more food regionally, or buying produce mostly in season, would mean everything we eat takes a shorter trip from the farm to our fridge – cutting back on the need for excess plastic in the first place.

But when it comes to those fruits and vegetables, how can wrapping produce in plastic increase food waste?

When fruits and vegetables come in pre-wrapped packages, they also come in fixed quantities. This means people can’t buy the amount they actually want or need, and often end up buying more than they would if it wasn’t all wrapped up. The excess, undesired food often goes to waste.

Pre-wrapped packages also often come with “best by” or “sell by” dates printed on them. The date on these labels don’t actually accurately reflect the time after which it would be dangerous to use the food, but lots of shoppers discard food past a printed “best by” date even if it looks alright.

When people are free to buy the right amount of food and use their senses and judgment to decide if their produce is still good, they waste less.

Plastic packaging isn’t only used to make food last longer

Even beyond the produce aisle, some of the other plastic packaging at the grocery store doesn’t help food last. Many companies package their goods in transparent plastic, or include plastic windows in cardboard containers. This is likely because of the belief that customers will find packages that let them see the food they are buying more appealing.

The plastic windows are there to drive sales, not improve quality. But according to some researchers, transparent plastic windows in packaging don’t necessarily make customers more likely to buy something.

More sustainable packaging with graphics or photographs illustrating the product inside can be just as effective in encouraging customers to buy, and much less wasteful.

Some stores are using excess plastic packaging on purpose.

Costco is a big company – and the plastic packaging on its shelves is big, too.

Many Costco products are ridiculously overpackged: Consider a two-inch tub of eye cream in an 8×11 plastic shell. But the worst part is, this isn’t a mistake or oversight on Costco’s part. The oversized plastic packages on tiny items at Costco are sized that way on purpose.

No matter how small the product is, Costco mandates minimum packaging sizes in order to control how products look and fit on shelves. The bigger packages also provide more room for them to print marketing and information on the labels, and make it more difficult for would-be shoplifters to sneak small items out of the store.

It makes sense that a company would want to reduce shoplifting and care about how its products are displayed – but an excess of plastic is not a good way to solve this problem.

As plastic piles up in our environment and pollution threatens our health, we need companies everywhere to be using less plastic, not more.

Plastic-free ways to reduce food waste

Companies and customers alike can take steps to cut back on food waste without overusing plastic. 

One of the simplest ways retailers can help cut back on plastic pollution is to change the way they package their products. Cutting back on plastic packaging and substituting reusable or recyclable alternatives is a great way to get more sustainability onto grocery store shelves. 

Refill stores – sometimes known as “refilleries”  – are another option. These allow customers to fill their own containers with as much or as little of a product as they need and pay for it by quantity, eliminating the need for plastic packaging and the waste it creates. This reduces the amount of plastic in our lives, and also comes with the added benefit of ensuring that customers don’t ever take home more food than they need.

In general, as customers, shopping conscientiously and buying foods in the quantities we will actually use is a good way to reduce waste. Try planning your meals and shopping trips to reduce the amount of produce that sits unused in the back of the fridge, eventually going bad and needing to be thrown out.

And we can also use non-plastic solutions for food storage. Aluminum foil and beeswax wrappers are both great plastic-free alternatives for wrapping up leftovers.

Take action to reduce packaging waste

When we raise our voices together, we can urge companies to do the right thing and cut back on plastic packaging. Add your name to urge Costco to stop overpackaging its products.