Food for thought

This was partially my lunch but I’ll consider it a snack. This ice cream is Chocolatey Chip Cookie Dough from the company Breyers. Breyers creamery style products are located in Toronto Canada, so transportation and distribution is a major concern in this case. Also the packaging of the ice cream container did not seem to be overly or excessively wrapped. There was just a plastic wrap on the top of the lid so the lid and the container would not separate. I am leaning towards the idea that the overall packaging does not consume the major amount of fossil fuels required in its production.

Main ingredients: modified milk ingredients, water, sugar, glucose, hydrogenate cocunut oil, mono and diglycerides, cellulose gum, guargum, and chocolatey chip cookie dough.

I am definitely concerned about the oil that goes into the production and distribution of the product. The travel the ice cream actually takes to get into stores seems to be an issue. The production of the ice cream and the process that goes into mixing all the ingredients together seems to take a lot of energy. Also the storing and refrigerating of the contents would require a lot of energy to maintain the consistency ice cream needs. The overall energy ice cream requires as well as the energy necessary to keep the ice cream at a suitable state is extremely high.

So I got thirsty and went to grab an apple juice box. I never realized how much plastic covered the apple juice boxes. These apple juice boxed came in a case of five in a huge cardboard box. So my household buys them in bulk. I still can’t figure out if buying in bulk or in single packages is more efficient. Anyways, this apple juice is made by Sun-Ripe products in Kelowna BC, so in terms of distance, transportation is not a major issue with fossil fuels.

Ingredients: apple juice made from fresh apples and vitamin C.

My main concern in this case is the wrapping of the packages, straw wrappers, straws, and the creation of the juice boxes. In this case I think the boxes have been wrapped in secondary packaging since the plastic wraps several cases of juice. Packaging processes take alot of energy and machinery to complete the task and I would consider this as the most biggest fossil fuel absorber in this case. The machinery requires maximum energy supply to support the packaging production.  Also another issue with this juice box and the environment is that there seems to be unnecessary waste such as the plastic straw and wrappers. But it is also important to remember that the actual box can be recycled.