When you've got to pick a package or two

Glass or aluminium? Paper or plastic? Simon Webster comes to grips with recyclable containers.

OF ALL the plastic bottles, cartons, tin cans and glass jars on the shelves, surely one type of container is better for the environment than the rest. So which packaging should we pick?

At first glance, glass appears to be best option. It has the least amount of embodied energy (the amount of energy that goes into manufacturing it), at 12 megajoules per kilogram, compared with paper (25), steel (35), plastic (from 60 to 80) and aluminium (200).

Glass also recycles over and over. Aluminium and steel can also be recycled indefinitely but with some quality reduction, Sonneveld says.

"Paper can only be recycled six or seven times because the fibres get shorter every time it goes through the recycling loop," he adds, while the recycling of plastic presents "heaps of problems".

A better rule for consumers is to choose the item with the least packaging per weight of product. "If you choose small yoghurts versus big portion packs that's very environmentally expensive," Sonneveld says.
But bulk buyers beware. Wasted food is even more sinful than wasteful packaging.

When it comes to plastics, the number inside that symbol is crucial. It's no good putting a No. 5 food container in the yellow bin if your council only recycles numbers one to four. It's either going to end up in landfill or be sent overseas for recycling, and putting the wrong things in a bin can play havoc with recycling systems. See Planet Ark's website to find out what your council can handle.

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