Kickstart: A food waste obsession and edible packaging

Ever since the city where I live added food waste composting to our regular curbside trash and recycling bins, I've had this minor obsessive question.

Why can't more of our packaging be made of new materials that don't force us to throw them away or figure out if we can or cannot recycle them? Wouldn't it be environmentally better if we could regularly compost or even eat the packaging?

So, this story from Fast Company about the seaweed plastic maker Notpla Ltd. (short for "not plastic") caught my eye.

The startup company makes seaweed-based thin plastic film for packaging things like instant coffee, bite-sized water servings and condiments, as well as manufacturing waterproof coatings that help to make to-go containers biodegradable.

The little sachet-style packets are edible and biodegradable, the company says.

Notpla, as we reported in 2019, received some startup funding from the U.K. government.

The Fast Company story said it recently raised another $13 million from investors and, in a line probably written for me, noted that a teabag of the material will dissolve in water, adding nutrients and fiber to the tea. Game on.

Advocates of plastic packaging often point to its value in keeping food from rotting, extending its shelf life and in the process saving greenhouse gas emissions.

A new report from the United Nations takes it back a step, however, and looks at the pros and cons of our use of plastics in agriculture.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) released on Dec. 7 what it said was its first detailed analysis of the topic, calling it an "Assessment of agricultural plastics and their sustainability: a call for action."

It pointed to plastic products "greatly" helping productivity, like mulch films that control weed growth and reduce the need for pesticides, fertilizer and irrigation. All those are positives, along with things like greenhouse films and nets to extend growing seasons.

Those are points made by plastics firms and university researchers, like this story in our pages earlier this year.

But — and it's a sizable qualifier — there's microplastics.

FAO said its experts believe that soils "receive far greater quantities of microplastics" than the oceans, even though oceans have gotten most of the public attention. All that plastic, as it breaks into microscopic pieces, can get into our food and ultimately into us.

"Since 93 percent of global agricultural activities take place on land, there is an obvious need for further investigation in this area," FOA said.

The U.N. agency recommends rethinking how plastics are used, when possible, in a "6R" approach: refuse, redesign, reduce, reuse, recycle and recover.

At Plastics News, we spend a lot of time reporting on the environmental questions facing the industry and the changes underway, like in the first two items in today's Kickstart.

But stepping back from the big-picture headlines about long-term future of the industry, it's good to look at conditions on the ground, right now, and how companies are actually spending their money.

My colleague Catherine Kavanaugh takes a deep dive this week with a series of stories on plastics machinery markets, a good indicator of how plastics processors see their near-term futures.

The answer for 2021 is that things have looked pretty good.

As Catherine reported in one story, purchases of injection molding machines are projected to hit 5,000 this year in the United States, a 25 percent jump from 2020.

As well, in the blow molding and in the extrusion machinery segments, business remains good.

While there are many changes on the horizon for the industry — think use of recycled content, calls for more environmentally friendly product design or investors asking companies detailed questions about their sustainability plans — right now, there's a lot of investment in the industry.