Zero plastic eating means your focus is on limiting the plastic pollution caused by your food, instead of focusing on the greenhouse emissions caused by the production of it. Zero plastic food is an arm of the zero-waste movement in which people attempt to reduce the amount of trash they produce as much as possible. Origins of Plastic and Its Environmental Impact The creation of plastic props up oil and gas industries because much of the plastic currently produced is synthetic plastic, which is made from Naphtha chemicals, a distillation of crude oil. These oils must be further broken-down creating hydrocarbons like ethylene, propylene, and butylene. Once the polymers have been created, the next step will either be an addition reaction or a condensation reaction, creating plastic pellets or nurdles which are shipped to other factories to be remolded and shaped into plastic products in which our food is packaged. Plastic has another destructive phase after you are done with it. Marine plastic is responsible for killing one million sea birds and 100,000 thousand marine mammals, severely depleting ocean eco systems which are responsible for absorbing 100 PgC or 100 pentagrams of carbon. However, even plastic free foods that have traveled long distances can use large amounts of fossil fuels because they are driven in large trucks to the supermarkets. On average, foods like winter squash, potatoes and apples are shipped from 500-1200 miles before reaching the grocery store and even farther for those passion fruits and avocados, which is something to keep in mind Zero Waste and You
The main principle of zero waste food is that we as consumers vote with our dollars so that food that does not contain plastic packaging becomes the new normal. Every bit will count when we are working towards a more sustainable future. However, we can’t know the environmental impact of food just by looking at it. Not all the packaging of food is visible. Pears, plums and other more delicate fruit are wrapped in paper during transit, which is then discarded before the produce is put on display. Simple cost-effective ways to buy food with less plastic
Sources https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/plastic-pollution https://www.pnas.org/content/112/38/11899 https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/how-is-plastic-made.html https://www.marthastewart.com/7591697/ways-reduce-plastic-use-kitchen https://green.harvard.edu/news/do-food-miles-really-matter https://ugc.berkeley.edu/background-content/ocean-acidification/ https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/OceanCarbon
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AuthorI am a high school student who is creating her own blog for the first time for school about our food system and environmental issues Archives
May 2022
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