1y ago

packets of ketchup are super wasteful

The grams of waste per teaspoon of ketchup seems high.

What else has a super high packaging waste per consumable volume?

113 comments

Noone wants to hear this one because... we are spoiled and the alternative fucking sucks...
Diapers and wet wipes. Most are not biodegradeable. That one is the one I am guilty of that bothers me the most.
- I would expand that and say small kids in general are super wasteful. They consume a lot of resources, produce a lot of trash (and noise) and are a significant source of stress and sleep deprivation, both of which are suspected of causing cancer. 😅
  
  The good news is they are biodegradable.
  
  As someone who chose to be child free for many reasons, faeces everywhere, noise, trash and sleep deprivation are high on the list.
  
  My daughter is coming in 8 weeks...and now you tell me?
  
  Not to leave out the methane.
- Wet wipes are a ridiculous waste.
  Bidets are very accessible.
  
  It took me years to finally get a bidet. Now I'm a bidet enthusiast! The only bad thing about having a bidet is using a toilet without one.
  
  and after overdoing it on the spicy foods, bidets are a true life-saver
  sent from my bidet
- We use reusable nappies for our toddler, and the washing machine is powered by solar so I only really need to feel bad about any excessive water use. But then we still have to use disposables when they're at their nursery for a few days a week, or the staff don't smell anything and they get bad rashes we spend all week dealing with. At the very least though the nursery deals with nappies as a specific form of waste that they process separately, though I'm not sure to what end.
- Biodegradable wet wipes are a thing. They are a bit rougher but not bad.
  Biodegradable nappies/diapers exist too but they are awful. Similar to try cloth or reusable (with a changeable lining). Awful.

Individually wrapped slices of cheese have always seemed pretty egregious to me
- That's actually an oxide layer of plastic that naturally forms on Kraft singles after the manufacturing process.
- For that reason, alongside the important aspect of taste, I always recommend deli-style American. Kraft Deli Deluxe, or Land-o-Lakes, or any number of other brands.
  Deli-style often comes in a brick, pre-sliced and offset for quickly peeling slices away from one another (like how restaurants do it). It’s firmer, due to a reduced milk content compared to the Kraft singles, and holds its shape better under heat while still being the perfect, melty sandwich cheese that American is. There’s a reason some of the best burger chains use deli-style American as their main cheese.
  
  This is the best advice I've received all day, and I had a meeting with a mortgage advisor earlier.
- "cheese"
  
  We have actual cheese in europe individually wrapped. It's a thing.
  
  I worked in the grocery department of a major retailer and Kraft singles came in on unrefrigerated pallets.
- Especially because wax paper works fine
- Maybe, but they last a lot longer in the fridge
  I mean they used to. These days I definite prefer cheese to “cheese”

One of those coffee pods.
- I know some companies recycle them - the aluminium ones. Not sure how that factors in to the waste equation though.
  
  I use the nestle ones. And I’m pretty sure they’re made of single use plastic. I hope I’m wrong though. I have since just used regular beans
  
  Costco sells some (San Francisco brand?) made of paper and mesh which are biodegradable.
- They make biodegradable pods now that you just throw in with your food waste.
  
  Coffee grounds is also bio degradable.
  I don't really understand the need for the pods. Coffee is best fresh roasted and freshly grinded, which the ones in pods are absolutely not. Once i saw an ad where they sold "vintage coffee" nice rebranding to sell old ass pods, this isn't wine.
  Then they made these coffee balls that fit in a new machine, what are you doing?? Instead ob buying beans and grind them in your machine that can grind all the coffee, people rather buy some pre-ground weird ass coffee balls?
  
  There are also podless pods. That are just compressed coffee balls.

Packets of mustard
- Packets of mayonnaise.
  
  Packets of salt.
  
  Packets of Soy-Sauce

This one’s done to death, but kCups.
Also, plastic water bottles.
A more novel pick would be those plastic ez floss picks.
- Other than just flossing with string, is there a good reusable floss holder?
  Some people may have motor limitations that make flossing difficult. Or just find it gross
  
  They are a bit more expensive than the plastic ones but they make plastic free ones.
  https://a.co/d/fVLvJES
  
  My ADHD effectively does not allow me to floss regularly with standalone floss. It's either those or I'll do it maybe once a month.
  
  Get a 3d printer and make one I guess ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯
  
  This one has a reusable handle, it's just the little C shaped piece of plastic that the floss stretches across that is disposable. I'm sure it's not ideal, but I can get several uses out of each one before changing the floss. I just rinse it in hydrogen peroxide when I'm done. https://www.amazon.com/Listerine-ULTRACLEAN-Flosser-Refills-Flavored/dp/B00PG59X2K/
  Looking for a link to the one above, I found this one, which seems to replace the floss each time with a pretty nicely engineered system, I haven't tried it though. https://www.orthomechanic.com/easy-flosser/ After watching the video I feel like I would drool into the floss spool compartment and or get it wet when rinsing the thing.
- Could those be bamboo?
- Kcups are less wasteful than a coffee in a disposable cup from a gas station or drive thru every day.
  
  Those are separate problems. Kcups are wasteful vessels for producing coffee. The disposable cups are wasteful vessels for storing the coffee. it's twice as wasteful to use kcups with disposable cups.
- I also don't get kcups in general. In what situation are the soft and paper-based Senseo pads not superior? He holders are easier to clean, they store better since they're squishy and they come in smaller packs anyways. Plus they're cheaper.
  Why would someone go for those cups instead? 😒
  
  Those are cool, never seen or heard of them before in my part of the US. We use reusable kcups, so we put a filter and grounds in mesh/plastic shell. We like them because we can choose single servings of anything, like our local beans or herbal stuff like teeccino. But yeah Senseo pads look pretty great.
  
  The coffee from nespresso cups is definitely better than Senseo. Not sure about k cups as I don’t have experience with them.
  
  I tried to look up senseo, and the first hit said they were discontinued 11 years ago. Since the rest of you are claiming they are current, I’ll assume it’s either just a single of mnany providers or is country specific, but I didn’t actually read it.
  However the reason k-cups are better is because they are more of a success. A bit of a tautology, I know, but I k ow I can find a good selection of them anywhere
- Those little plastic floss things are my weakness seriously. Nothing is better to floss with, objectively. I cannot use traditional floss to save my life. It’s the only wasteful thing I use maybe besides straws
  
  There was this very popular kickstarter for this reusable floss pick (you just tie on new floss). I’m not sure how well they fulfilled kickstarter orders but i ordered one on their website, pre launch, and basically got a bounced email when I tried to contact them about it. Pretty unfortunate.
- I am on the fence about k-cups. I use to make a partial pot of coffee at work in the drip machine. Sometimes I would drink it all, often they would be a cup of two left. As well it would sit hot for at least three or more hours each day. I did a calculation at one point the energy used and wastage of a k-cup vs drip machine. It was not even close over a year. I had to estimate the energy for the cup itself but the k-cup used about a quarter of the energy as it was only on during the making of the coffee and you would only make what you wanted. No wastage.
  Simply put, the k-cup resulted in about 1/4 the carbon footprint of drip coffee in my situation. Personally I think people didn't really think this thru well and just jumped on it as being wasteful without doing any calculations.
  
  Alright but the one time use kcups accumulate tons of plastics
  
  A wasted pot of coffee doesn't produce a shitload of plastic
  
  Nothing beats a fully automatic espresso machine when it comes to efficiency. Want an espresso, large coffee or any of the other things it can prepare, and it is made with the parameters you want. The only non organic waste is the packaging of the coffee beans, which isn't too bad, as they usually come in 500g of 1kg packs.
  Some even have 2 beans containers for when you want to have different flavors, and almost all have a chute for a portion of ground coffee for the occasional special drink (decaffeinated or so, for visitors for example)
  Edit: typo
  
  Every drip machine I’ve used has a 2 hour shutoff

The tiny, plastic, fish-shaped soy sauce bottles you get with takeaway sushi.

Not as bad as the others, but it's been on my mind... My wife bought a box of Ding-Dongs (my daughter begged her) and inside, each one was individually wrapped. They could have put them all in one tray.
- Every box of sweets in Japan are like that. There's an outer layer of plastic, an inner layer and every sweet is individually packaged. It feels so wasteful.
  
  I got some chineese chocolate from a colleague, and it was a plastic wrapped paper box wih 10 smaller boxes on the inside. These smaller boxes were an orb shaped chocolate wrapped in aluminium foil, wrapped in a small plastic bag.
- I bought a family pack of chocolate croissants the other week and the packaging was plastic, then they divided them in 3 smaller packets and inside they were individually packed. I don't really understand
- Your not meant to eat them all in one go though, and theyd get stale pretty quick if they weren't individually wrapped.
  
  Resealable bag. Problem solved.

All those individually wrapped candies EDIT: MicroSD cards!!!
- How’re are sd cards wasteful?
  
  I think they mean the packaging. Micro SD cards usually come in a package that's 10x the volume of the card, itself.
  Though, I'm not sure there's a decent way around that one. It's really difficult to ship and stock incredibly small products like that.
- Individually package candy is a Japanese specialty, like, they seemingly pride themselves on how much they're being wasteful.

Anything sold single dose.
- Condoms
  
  You could pretty easily argue they're among the least wasteful things made, regardless of how much packaging they come in
  
  Condoms prevent kids though, and those produce metric fucktons of waste
  
  Not something I'd want to be re-usable.

Carton of toothpastes

taco sauce packets at taco john's are a lot worse in the 'waste per packet per quantity of sauce' category.
- Thanks for noting the per quantity nuance! :)
  Water bottles suck, but you do get 500g of water for 10g of plastic. For ketchup it's more like 5g ketchup to 2g plastic. Never seen a taco John's packet and hope I never do

Wrapping straws.
- I would add straws themselves. People always complain about the paper straws that are ass, because they are. But straws themselves are. I don't think i ever drank anything and thought: you know what would make this drink better? A straw.
  
  Same for nearly every situation except when I am driving. Hate getting them at restaurants for any drink but on the road sometimes handy.
  I find it a bit funny though. I suspect that plastic lid on a drink contains 5 times the amount of plastic contained in a straw. If you get one of those large convenience store drinks, the plastic cup and lid likely contains the equivalence of 50 straws. While it is good to reduce consumption all around, I find straws are mostly just signaling. Go to a dump and you likely will be hard pressed to find a single straw but you will see tons of plastic.
  
  Idk man iced coffee without a straw just seems weird. Really anything iced, I just don’t want ice coming up to my teeth/lips/mustache when I drink it…but coffee especially.
  I use (and usually have with me) reusable straws, but I hate when I’m out and about and get an iced coffee with a sip-spout.
  Also, while on the topic, as a mustachio’d man, straws also prevent the beverage from getting trapped in my facial hair, or facial hair ending up in my drink.

Packets of tears.

Condoms
(people here really don't understand jokes)
- I feel like the net impact on carbon use makes condoms reasonable.
  
  Also we have to question whether it can be considered waste if it's actually necessary.
- Every sperm is sacred

113 comments