Bad packing mars green goods

Green products come in green containers, right? Not necessarily.

Green products - like any other product - often are shipped in packages many times their size and sold in nonrecyclable, virgin plastic containers.

“You can buy something at a place like Whole Foods that is overpackaged,” says Lisa Wise, executive director of the Center for the New American Dream, a green nonprofit in Takoma Park. “We suggest that people think more creatively about how they buy things. Go to the farmers market. Use reusable bags. Buy in bulk. Avoid bottled water. … Think of how you can avoid packaging altogether.”

Sustainable blogger Colin Beavan says that at the core of the issue of green packaging - or the lack thereof - is that many companies are trying to capitalize on green products as opposed to green systems. In other words, they count on consumers not looking at the entire life cycle of a product, but rather just the finished product.

For example, a product could be organic but produced in China (long transport) and packaged in a virgin plastic bottle (brand new, energy-intense production) that is not recyclable (ends in a landfill).

“About 40 percent of what goes into our municipal waste stream is packaging,” Mr. Beavan says. “Which means about 40 percent of manufacturing is devoted to making packages.”

Avoiding packaging is easier said than done, however. Try buying yogurt without a package.

At Seventh Generation, a Burlington, Vt.-based company for green home products, the approach is two-pronged: Increase postconsumer - recycled - content in packaging, and, second, which is more long-term, work on in-store, package-free solutions.

“We’re going from 25 percent postconsumer content to 75 percent in our laundry and spray cleaner bottles,” says Peter Swaine, Seventh Generation spokesman.

The corrugated boxes used for shipping products to stores soon will be made of 100 percent postconsumer content, Mr. Swaine says.

Aside from being less taxing on the environment (by not using virgin plastic) the company aims to help create more demand for postconsumer packaging.

“We want to help create a market for recycled products,” says Reed Doyle, who does research and development for Seventh Generation. “So, when competitors want to know where we buy our recycled products, we’re the first to tell them.”

In the end, however, Joe and Jane Consumer are still left with - once the product is gone - a bottle that might not be recyclable. In the District, for example, laundry detergent bottles are not recyclable. Even when recycling is available, the process of turning bottles into sweaters, for example, is resource intensive.

“In the end, sustainable packaging is a bit of an oxymoron,” Mr. Doyle acknowledges.

And then we’re back to avoiding packaging altogether, but it’s not like buying yogurt without a container has gotten any easier in the past five minutes.

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