We’ve talked plenty of times about the problems that bad packaging has, especially with the overly abundant usage of land, and the environmental effects that this has on the habitats. However, there are a lot of factors that do play a larger role, so it’s important to look at the overall state of things, to get a picture for where environmental sustainability plays a role in things.
A lot of plant-based packaging might seem like a good alternative, especially when you’re comparing the plastic and other pollutant packaging. But keep in mind that there are some factors that you need to bear in mind when you’re looking to meet the demands people have on your packaging.
The crops do need land to grow, and the land is definitely finite. A lot of times, people don’t realize how much crops need to grow to create hemp, corn, and bamboo, in order to meet those demands that the market has.
There’s also demands that can be taken away from different industries that these same crops come from. If you rely on just plant-based options, it may create more problems than good.
A lot of agricultural practices like too many pesticides, fertilization and monoculture are a problem for the soil health. With the demand growing, there then needs to be more land given to each of these demands.
The problem with industrial farms
There’s a lot of new farmland that’s created through these natural habitats, and other forests that were once left untouched. The destruction of a habitat is the biggest threat to all animals, and the growth of the farmland isn’t helping all of this. The plants and animals do need some space to live, breed and then grow. When the space becomes insufficient and endangered, it results in a drastic plummet of the population, which can be irreversible in some cases.
Even just the loss of some of the untouched soil creates a huge environmental impact.
One example of this is corn. Corn is now used for bioplastics, rather than mere food, and increases this demand. With corn being grown exclusively in America, it’s something that we need a lot of land for.
The prairies and grass plains help with this, but the problem is that the untouched soil gets rid of the carbon emission, and depending on your location, it stores different carbon amounts, removing a quarter of the fossil fuels that are there.
With almost half of your land supporting that the soil loses a ton of carbon, and monoculture planting doesn’t really replace it.
The same goes with bamboo and sugarcane. What you need to do is make sure to monitor and ethically perform these.
There’s a lot of monitoring that goes into this, something that not enough people know about.
So what’s the solution? How do you fix this ongoing issue?
Knowing the Source
The best thing to do is to make sure that you’re aware of the environment. Talk with the suppliers, to make sure that the materials are coming from ethical locations.
If it’s sourced from farmlands that border on endangered habitats, that’s a huge red flag. If the supplier won’t tell you where it’s coming from, definitely get a new supplier. Definitely keep an eye out on things, and how it works across the board.
Don't be afraid to frequent the water and energy audits to make sure that you’re using the energy well.
Recycle as much as you can, because it eliminates a lot of this. Finally, renewable energies are easy to source.
