To Recycle or not to Recycle and instead Reuse?

This month our blog is coauthored by our founder Naomi and by Nicola, an environmental scientist who has been working with us on our pilot and ensuring we can back up the impact of our products and services with evidence – welcome Nicola!

The issue we are (luckily) both really passionate about investigating is food service packaging. We decided to look at different takeaway packaging options and prove which is THE most environmentally friendly. We’ve previously spoken about the environmental credentials of different single use takeaway packaging and that bioplastics, while seemingly a better solution, are not currently being recycled and are not breaking down in landfill.

Studies have shown that when people consider the sustainability of packaging, they usually only care about end of life processing. Packaging gets a big tick if it is biodegradable, compostable or not taking hundreds of years to break down in landfill.

However just as important are factors such as initial resource consumption and source, water and energy use throughout the life cycle of the product, reuse or recyclability, and end of life processing. So, when taking this lifecycle analysis into account, which product wins out in the end?

Yep, it’s reusables. One study found that while reusables will have a higher water usage (due to washing products between uses), one reusable container (even made of plastic) would only needed to be re-used 15 times to equal the greenhouse gas contribution, energy consumption and material waste impact of a comparable compostable container.

Reusables are clearly the winner when it comes to sustainability! We’d love to spark a debate around this topic and invite you all to get involved.

NB: Couldn’t find an attribution for the image. Happy to add one or remove