The amount of plastic from a Kinder Bueno 4 pack

pete_the_cat@lemmy.world to Mildly Infuriating@lemmy.world – 747 points –

Each bar is wrapped in cellophane, which are then wrapped in the normal outer packaging. To make the 4 pack, they simply took 2x two packs and put them on a cardboard tray,and then wrapped those.

I don't think I've ever gone through so much unwrapping for candy.

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i have recently become very aware of and disgusted by the the amount of plastic waste i make.

every single goddammed thing is covered in it. it's obscene and i am ashamed.

Don't blame yourself for something that is the fault of massive corporations.

Not your fault there are few, good alternatives. By all means, if switching to more ethical products makes you feel better, don't let me stop you, but this is a problem that needs government regulation to solve.

But the government regulation will never come without a LOT of voters feeling very unhappy, so perhaps don't tell people they shouldn't feel unhappy about the situation?

I guess I dodn't make myself clear. People should be angry, but they should point that anger at these massive corporations who keep distributing everything in single-use plastic containers, even when there are friendlier alternatives.

People also need education about greenwashing and how to detect it.

There are private companies that do recycle plastic film. I'm in the PNW and I use Ridwell, and it's helped a lot. I still aim for Reduce first, try to not use plastic when possible, but with food that's difficult. Reuse obviously, and then Recycle as my last resort, and Ridwell is good with that. If you're in the PNW and are interested, I think I have discount codes since I'm a member, just DM me if interested

Terracycle must be a competitor.

Have a friend who puts the majority of her focus on another R: Refuse! Boba tea shop says they can’t fill her reusable mason jar? No boba for her.

She holds onto her trash, and at the end of one year, had half a mason jar full. You could make out one thing in it: a luggage tag from mandatory business trip. Amazing!

And then a billionaire gets in their private jet, and in just 5 seconds of flight generates 8000 times more carbon emissions than she's saved in her entire life.

Okay, that may be a slight exaggeration.

It's funny how all roads lead to eat the rich.

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If you want to really know how much try this. https://thebigplasticcount.com/

Tracking what you use will go towards data that can be used to pressure companies and government to try to change their ways.

I'm also aware of the amount of plastic waste that passes through my hands.

The difference here being: i notice what is necessary and how much of it is useless extra added on by the manufacturer for advertisement purposes.

The latter is usually 50% and even as bad as 80% in a lot of cases.

I'm not ashamed, i'm dissapointed they are allowed to keep doing this while i'm forced to make all kind of changes (i use forced because they artificially increase the price to stop us from doing things)

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What did we package things in before disposable plastic became ubiquitous? I don't think I was alive then. Or did we just have a lot less small and single serving products?

Wax paper, or just paper, or tin foil.

Like Cadbury creme eggs used to just be wrapped in foil, now they're plastic. <- Apparently this is only in Canada since 2015. TIL.

Chocolate bars used to be folded aluminium foil and paper. Some still use those materials but now they weld (crimp with enough pressure?) the foil which is probably better for the product but OTOH it's slightly annoying because you have too little foil to re-wrap a bar you only took a little bit off of.

I think they're still wrapped in foil in Australia, though I haven't had any in a few years. I don't think I've ever seen any eggs come wrapped in plastic, although the bags the foil eggs are in are plastic

Many things didn’t used to be packaged at all, they were sold loose in bulk. The shop would put them in a paper bag at purchase.

Come to think of it, nowadays you can still buy certain things in bulk, but a packaged option exists too. You could carefully choose and weigh the individual potatoes you like, or you could just pick up a bag that was prepared earlier in some potato factory. The same things applies to many fruits and vegetables too.

Kit Kat's were in foil with a paper wrapper.

I bought some recently and was dismayed to see they were now in plastic as well.

I'm 38 and had to think real hard to remember when they had the foil wrapper and paper sleeve.

Order literally anything from china. Each part in a Ziploc, then grouped in a Ziploc, in a box with bubble or balloon wrap, and/or styrofoam, then like 8 miles of yellow packing tape so you have no idea where to open from, and maybe another box or garbage bag layer with more tape, then the packing slip sleeve and more tape over that.

Support your local baker and chocolate shop instead, big corporations aren't your friend but your local small business owner could be

Where I live normal bread like buns, sliced bread and baguette from my local baker are not more expensive than the grocery store, things like croissants and sausage/chocolate rolls are a bit more expensive but way better in quality however pastries and chocolate are disproportionately more expensive there so I still buy those at the store.

Local business owners don't stock their goods at the checkout counter at Walgreens. Also, even though I'm in a big city, no one makes something like the Kinder Bueno, it's not a simple chocolate bar.

Your argument is that since it's not convient or an exact substitution, we should continue supporting these companies that annoy us?

It also has alot of palm-oil in it so it is another reason to avoid it.

Fuck palm oil and any product using it, just like fuck nestle in general.

*Ferrero

I know. Nestle is just kinda the leader of the pack of must get fucked into a black hole and is probably what all these distopiacorps aspire to be

Nestlé sucks. But I'd assume Ferrero uses even more palm oil. It is in pretty much all of their stuff.

Even WWF doesn't think avoiding palm oil is a good solution. Not short term and definitely not long term

https://wwf.panda.org/discover/our_focus/food_practice/sustainable_production/palm_oil/

Palm is the most efficient crop for producing a wide range of fats. Replacing it with some other source of fat will require more land and water, and disrupt nature in another part of the world.

Thank you for the very informative link.

Did not know that.

I always try to avoid it but thanks to this list i at least know which company to trust about it a bit. Scorecard

Still wont buy anything from danone, mars or nestle tho.

I think it's fair to say those brands will source from the cheapest, scummiest places and it doesn't matter what "certificate" sticker is on the box.

But it is so hard to avoid them where I live :/ Even the fairtrade, vegan and responsible green washed products are from those 3...

And it's not vegan, and it's not made from fair cocoa, so two more reasons

It's milk chocolate (coated at least)... I've tried alternatives and frankly white, dark and flavoured vegan chocolates are good enough but there's nothing close to or as good as milk chocolate so at this point it's like saying "boycott steak because it's not vegan"... It's a fact, sure, but not a reason against it for people who aren't already vegan, and vegans are already boycotting it away, so it's a reason for nobody?

That said the fair cocoa point is very valid.

I bought one of these a couple weeks ago to try and I haven't wanted to buy another because of this. Which is a shame. They were delicious.

They're my absolute weakness. I usually get two two packs and was like "oh they make a four pack now?" Thinking it would be less packaging.. nope, it was more!

I wonder how quickly they would react if enough people mobbed them on social media to redesign the packaging. 🤔 Because surely, using more material for packing is expensive and they could actually save money by being more sensible with how they're packaged.

I bought refillers for ball pen to "reduce plastic" and its packing has plastic equivalent of an entire new pen

At least cellophane is plant based and will bio degrade

Assuming it's actually cellophane

... Which I doubt

I don't see why it would be so unlikely to be cellophane but OP would have to test it.

Try to light it on fire! Cellophane burns like paper, while plastics will melt.

Man, you should see the Gansito packaging. Think about the Twinkie 2ct packaging where its wrapped in plastic with a cardboard tray to give it support. Thats fine. But Gansito goes an extra step. The whole package is wrapped in a foil bag. Inside it has a plastic tray, in which the individual cakes are wrapped in plastic. All this plastic for whats essentially 4 big bites of cake.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8e2gKAfuswY

Whenever I'm hating myself for my single use weaknesses, I picture a nurse doing one blood test or bandage... In every room.... In every hospital... Everywhere.. and that's just healthcare which we give a pass for obvious reasons. If you want to project your self-hate onto others instead of using the exercise to chill out and be kind to yourself, you can even think of other industries like how much shit is coming out of some gun or Budweiser factory somewhere 🤷

I'm curious how much plastic it actually is, if you say, melted it into a bead. It's hard to tell just by looking at a bunch of torn-up wrappers.

According to this it takes about 50 tons of PE granules to make about 40 Kilometers of clingfilm.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVYpmXRHu00

Moar plastic manufacturing. Thickness of 2/10,000 of an inch. Plastic is crazy cheap and efficient compared to other methods.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp2RDu9fw6o

Plastic bags. Full roll is 348 lbs which makes 35,000 bags.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KznKNiXPFxM

If you're wondering about crude to plastic efficiency...

It takes about 0.4 gallons of crude oil to make one pound of plastic, which means that 11 million metric tons of plastic equates to approximately 9.7 trillion gallons of oil.

https://oceanconservancy.org/blog/2021/09/24/plastic-pollution-oil-spill/

A nice copout answer from the US Government lol.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) is unable to determine the specific amounts or origin of the feedstocks that are actually used to manufacture plastics in the United States.

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=34&amp;t=6

This oil website even busts their chops on it lol.

This fact itself raises questions such as, “How many barrels of oil go into plastic packaging?” A question that is quite difficult to answer. The Energy Information Administration absolutely refuses to answer it, saying that it collects no data in this segment. Yet data from a few years ago, when the EIA still collected information about this, shows that in 2010 some 191 million barrels of LPG and NGL were used for the production of plastics along with 412 billion cu ft of natural gas. The liquids amount constituted about 2.7 percent of the country’s total petroleum consumption. Most of the natural gas used in plastics production was used as a fuel rather than feedstock.

Plastics production accounts for about 4 percent of global oil production. That’s according to figures for 2012, so now it may well be higher.

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/How-Much-Crude-Oil-Does-Plastic-Production-Really-Consume.html

Some interesting glass to plastic energy efficiency info, not discounting their completely different use cases.

The total energy required to produce, package, and transport a 16 oz. PET container is 32 MJ compared to 34 MJ for a 16 oz. glass container – virtually the same. Producing a pound of plastic resin, however, uses nearly nine times the energy of producing a pound of glass. These comparisons assume the use of virgin glass.

https://ecologycenter.org/plastics/ptf/report1/

Only the individual bar wrappings were the standard clear plastic (stronger and more rigid than cling film), the two and four pack wrappers were the folk-like wrappers that you would see on Kit-Kats and the like.

I can tell you for certain it's more than two packs of Twix. A lot more.

I ordered a load of network patch cables recently. They all came packaged individually in sealed plastic bags.

And the fucking twist ties.

Why? I’m bulk ordering the shit, I don’t care that they are individually bagged and neatly presented.

Surely there must be some way to bulk-ship pre-terminated cable in a way that doesn’t require tons of plastic and twist ties but still is a decent cable and not a tangled mess by the time I use it.

I actually like the twist ties. I save them up for when I need to redo my cables. Way nicer than snipping zipties when I need to add a cable to the bunch.

I ordered a lens filter for my camera, and couldn't believe the amount of packaging and plastic wrapping it came with. It was absurd to the point of lunacy. We're talking several boxes, something like four or five different plastic wrappers, etc. For a lens filter!

It's almost like manufacturers are aware that consumers aren't "allowed" to use single-use plastic when getting groceries, so they double-down on their use for everything else!

Yeah, I ordered two end tables with shelves from Amazon a few weeks ago and they were like that. Each table had about 10-15 bags, and like 7 sheets of styrofoam.

and like 7 sheets of styrofoam.

I really, really hate styrofoam. I recently had to put out an industrial-sized bag filled with the stuff, and I can't honestly believe it's still used for packing items. Strategically used cardboard, especially the formed stuff, is so much better to use and can be recycled easily.

We haven't been able to find a Walmart Pickup location that doesn't use way too many plastic grocery bags, so we finally got around to buying and using reusable bags, and it's so much better! I can actually bring in the groceries in one trip now. I'm never going back. IDK why the shoppers at Walmart insist on putting only 1 or 2 items in each plastic bag. I understand keeping some items separate for food safety, but this is ridiculous! I used to live close to my grandma who crochets plastic grocery bags into sleeping pads for unhoused folks, but we moved away from her and have no use for 20-30 plastic bags a week.

I’ve always wondered why they use so many as well! I assume it’s each group of items that a single shopper pulls goes into one bag and they have one shopper per like four aisles or something. I have nothing to base that on though, whatever it is it’s a ridiculous amount of bags.

If you get delivery they will sometimes put three or four bags with a single item each all into another bag so they can carry it easier.

What's funny is after living in NYC for 5 years and being forced to use reusable bags for years I got used to it. I moved to Miami about 5 months ago and I'm Downtown so I can walk to most places I need to go, and bring a reusable bag with me. A lot of stores down here aren't used to customers using a reusable bag, so I would tend to get a lot of looks haha I'd walk across the street to get my groceries and they would give me like 5-10 plastic bags when I'm like "I can fit like 75% of it in my backpack and these two bags".

What's wrong with palm oil?

https://www.worldwildlife.org/industries/palm-oil#:~:text=Impacts,-%C2%A9%20Hartmut%20Jungius&amp;text=Large%20areas%20of%20tropical%20forests,including%20rhinos%2C%20elephants%20and%20tigers.

Thankw for the post! But great. A whole new thing I didn't know I had to look out for and worry about. Every day I'm reminded of the part of Good Place that talks about all the little bad things we do every day without meaning to or thinking about it.

For one, just like any other harvestable good, it takes a lot of land and resources to grow the palm trees.

That's only half of the issue. In fact, palm oil is entirely very space efficient compared to rape seed or other vegetable oils.

The actual issue only starts when you take into account that oil palms really only grow in south east Asia and Oceania, and the space required is obtained by cutting down rainforest.

Does it shock you coming from a company that uses child labor to manufacture their stupid plastic chunks they call toys?

Ferraro didn't own the suppliers, and I thought they said they were going to address the issues of Turkish child labor with their suppliers. Are you saying they didnt?

Are you saying you just assume a corporation doesn't lie non-stop?

To be honest, I am curious what had happened since they said it.

But I do expect everyone on the internet to lie non stop.

2 rules to the internet i follow since 1985: everyone is a liar until proven otherwise, and annonimty is important to keep rule 1.

Do you want a quality product or mush?

They just need a single foil wrapping to preserve the humidity on the wafer, not a matrioska of wrappings

A single wrapper and the cardboard tray would suffice. You probably don't even need the tray TBH. I don't think I've ever gotten broken Twix bars, and I eat them all the time.