ponderings from the dairy aisle
Oct. 11th, 2006 11:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellio
Most of the time (where I shop), milk comes in plastic containers.
Occasionally, it comes in the waxy cardboard ones instead. Last night I
actually had a choice, and realized I don't know which one is more
green. Plastic can be recycled (good) and the cardboard can't, but I
have the impression that producing the plastic container is more
destructive to the environment -- and, of course, you also have to
factor in the costs of recycling. Trash in a landfill also imposes a
cost, and means that cost of production is borne entirely by one use.
Overall, I don't know which one is less bad.
Which would you buy?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-11 06:54 pm (UTC)But I wanted to share that, back in the day, the MIT coffee house had a comment book -- a spiral notebook and a pen left on the condiments counter, where patrons could make suggestions and criticisms to the coffee house. A low-tech instantiation of a web forum, before the web was invented. :) Their note book had a, well, a running flame-war about the comparative greenness of paper cups vs. styrofoam cups. I actually would have thought it a no-brainer, but the pro-styrofoam advocate made quite the case against the paper industry, both in terms of old-growth logging and use of petrochemicals in cup manufacture. It was highly informed and highly informative.
And I still don't know which is greener. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-11 11:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-12 12:34 am (UTC)