We Love Jam is the first US company to use biodegradable plastic food packaging

We Love Jam sells delicious jams and jellies in limited quantities produced from fruit from their organic trees.

A self-proclaimed green company, they have now gone a step further and changed their packaging to biodegradable plastic bags that will break down in a landfill.

The plastic used is largely plant-derived.

"We learned that natural, plant-based and biodegradable cellophane was used for many food products several decades ago but was replaced by synthetic non-recyclable and non-biodegradable plastic that is now confusingly called cellophane," says Co-founder Haeberli.

"Consumers today who buy food and care about the environment never know what type of plastic wrapper their food is in since packaging isn't marked to let them know."
 

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Comments

[arduous]

Okay, I went to their wesbite and I am still confused as to what it is exactly that's in plastic. The jar is glass, the lid is ... whatever lids are. Is the jar shrink-wrapped in plastic? Because if so that's ridiculous.

If they're using bio-degradable plastic for necessary mass packaging I guess it's better. Here's the thing though. Corn is FOOD. This is a band aid. Not a solution.

[Life Less Plastic]

I agree that biodegradable plastics made from plant sources are not the answer.

First off, biodegradable plastic may have the capability to degrade, but in closed landfills, it will likely take hundreds of years for plastics to break down.

Second, waste is waste, and biodegradable plastics just make people feel better about create billions of tons of garbage that will take hundreds of years to decompose. What we all need to do is start focusing our energy on how to reduce the amount of packaging we all use. It's just a smart idea.

Finally, as Arduous said, corn is food. If we start using corn for all of our packaging and fuel, what is going to happen to the cost of what we eat? Yes, corn doesn't come from foreign sources like oil does, but I'm not quite sure if I want the cost of my food to go up drastically. It just seems like a bad thing.

[Life Less Plastic]

One last thing and then I promise to stop venting about bio-plastics. I just found the following quote on Fake Plastic fish, which was originally written by Michael Pollan. I thought it would be a good thing to add:

"The way we grow corn in this country consumes tremendous quantities of fossil fuel. Corn receives more synthetic fertilizer than any other crop, and that fertilizer is made from fossil fuels — mostly natural gas. Corn also receives more pesticide than any other crop, and most of that pesticide is made from petroleum. To plow or disc the cornfields, plant the seed, spray the corn and harvest it takes large amounts of diesel fuel, and to dry the corn after harvest requires natural gas. So by the time your “green” raw material arrives at the ethanol plant, it is already drenched in fossil fuel. Every bushel of corn grown in America has consumed the equivalent of between a third and a half gallon of gasoline."