#edible packaging

Like, okay. So paper packaging sucks because it takes so much tonnage of lumber a year to produce and even more water and energy to produce.

Plastic packaging sucks because it pollutes every water source, drifts across rivers and oceans willy nilly and chokes out the wildlife, and doesn't degrade well at all.

Recycling sucks because it takes an extreme amount of energy and water to clean, process, and melt down and reform; besides the fact that there's only so many plastics that can be recycled and the other types we throw away are contaminating it. Also china has most of the recycling facilities and they are pissssed at pretty much doing all the work and putting down their own recycling plants at massive cost.

So, what do we do?

EDIBLE PACKAGING.

look, if the tide pod crisis and my odd habit of eating paper lolly sticks has taught me anything, it's that we humans reaaally like to eat the colorful and forbidden. So let's make digestible packaging. Fibrous materials with tasty flavours added in, bright colours, even different textures? Add a little nutrition too?

You could have your big mac and eat the wrapper, too.

No more need for square miles of garbage disposals for food stuff packaging. Because it's digestible, it's also biodegradable, so if someone forgets to eat their bana flavored laffy taffy wrapper, it's gone in a few years anyways.

We just need to r&d it,

Excerpt:

You might compost religiously. You might recycle everything your city can handle. But even the most environmentally conscious individual might have trouble responsibly disposing the ubiquitous food wrapper.

These crinkly, colorful sheets that come with our granola bars and potato chips can contain so many different materials mixed together (plastic, aluminum, paper, etc.) that recycling it can be too laborious or too expensive to be worth it.

But Indonesian startup Evoware has come up with a genius solution to tackle this problem by creating an edible and biodegradable packaging made from seaweed. The company says its product has a two-year shelf life and can dissolve in warm water. It can customized to give a specific taste, like mint or green tea.