| |DECEMBER 20219decompose only in a commercial composting facility. Industrial composting facilities treat the packaging at high temperatures (above 55 degrees, much higher than can be achieved at home) to accelerate degradation of the material. Unfortunately in India we dont have these sites.Packaging labeled as home compostable means that the customer simply can place the packaging in the home compost bin along with fruit and vegetable. Home compostable packaging means that any component or material used in the packaging including the printing ink, and the adhesives decompose into organic soil.4) Sustainable packaging is what we should aspire for!Sustainable is a low bar, it still needs to be achieved but it will not be enough. Packaging should not be just sustainable but also regenerative as everything in nature is.All that we produce for packaging needs to have a clear end of life. It needs to be nutritious food for another organism. It needs to break down and become earth again. We cannot possibly keep generating more harm through trying to collect, transport, `down cycle' and re-transport to finally reach a stage where we cannot down cycle any more.5) Land Dumps & Landfills are the sameLandfills are strategically located away from environmentally sensitive areas and are well-engineered with facilities for the disposal of solid waste. Designed to protect the environment from contaminants, landfills are placed using on-site environmental monitoring systems. Plus, to minimize the negative impact on the environment, efforts are made to control emissions of unpleasant or toxic substances. On the other hand, land dumps are just an excavated piece of land, a large open hole where waste material is dumped. It is not regulated and these sites are a source of harmful emissions. In India, we mostly have land dumps which doesn't help. 6) Sustainable options are expensiveA notion that clouds sustainable packaging is that it is not cost-effective. It's only true in the short term in certain circumstances but certainly not in the long term. As compared to the cost that the environment is incurring due to single-use plastics, sustainable options are not even a fraction. Moreover, the buyers are now purchasing products with sustainable packaging, even if they cost a bit more than a product with less conscious packaging. This can be given a further push for the benefit of a large number of people.7) Corporate Green washingSome companies just by adopting eco-friendly packaging are saying that they are green but we need to look at the overall picture, their manufacturing process, supply chain - the entire value chain needs to be assessed. Our processes need to also ideally be regenerative or at the least be neutral.In a nutshell, sustainability may mean different things to different companies. For one, it may mean avoiding greenhouse gases, for another it may mean reducing food waste. However, the ultimate goal is to understand the true environmental impact of all packaging. A complete life-cycle analysis of its environmental costs needs to be done.
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