Lunch!

Lunch was a Tim Horton’s Turkey Bacon Club sandwich.  A combination of whole wheat bread, lettuce, tomato, swiss cheese, bacon and turkey – there was a total of 750 calories in this meal.

The sandwich was served to me in a wax paper wrapper which was then put in a paper bag. Given the fact that I ate in the restaurant, I would have expected to be served with  a plate, but not everything is perfect.  In this post I’m going to focus more specifically on packaging and how it came to be handed to me.

Starting with the wax paper wrapping, i’d like to note that I am assuming this wrapping is plain wax paper with no added twists as researching the exact composition didn’t provide me with any useful information. Although wax paper is biodegradable, the additives such as petroleum make it take a along time to breakdown.  It is also advised that this paper not be recycled.  So before looking at how much energy was needed to make this, we already know there is going to be fossil fuels burned in the transportation of this garbage to the dump. This link: http://www.dunnpaper.com/ directs you to Dunn Paper, which is a major paper producer, specifically with wax paper.  On their website you can see photos of their factory and the numerous machines they have.  I admit to not being able to find exact numbers for the fossil fuel consumption, but all evidence points to it being much higher than needed as excessive amounts of energy is needed to run all the machines.

The paper bag that encapsulated the sandwich is roughly the equivalent of one 8′ by 11′ piece of paper for numbers and accuracy sake. According to howitworks.com, a one foot diameter tree that is sixty feet tall provides 80,500 sheets of paper.  One in 80,500 is rather insignificant, but we must focus on the fossil fuels burned to process this tree into it’s final product.  First, there is the logging process which requires heavy machine to cut and transports to trees, which of course as all powered by fossil fuels.  Next comes processing the trees, which occurs is factories similar to the one describe above at the Dunn Paper Company.  Once these steps are completed, the final product can then be shipped in gas guzzling eighteen-wheelers across the country or to wherever a restaurant is in need.

“The common assumption these days is that we muster our weapons to secure oil, not food”, but the same can be said for mustering oil to produce packaging rather than food [8].

__________________________________________________________

[7] Calgary Travel Foodie. “Ham & Swiss Sandwich.” http://www.elsiehui.com/food/snack/tim-hortons-ham-swiss-sandwich/

[8] Manning, Richard. The Oil We Eat, Harper’s Magazine, (Feb 2004): 37-45