An Inside Look at Our Packaging Choices
Running a company according to environmental principles means navigating a series of tough tradeoffs and hard compromises. Nowhere is this more apparent than food packaging. For example, a choice that’s simple on paper, like opting for compostable packaging, ends up being remarkably complicated in practice.
Green marketing aside, the elephant in the room of compostable packaging right now is that a surprising amount of it is not actually able to be composted. Additionally, as our friends at Regrained found out the hard way, some compostable packaging fails to keep food fresh as long as plastic packaging does, ironically resulting in a solution to one type of waste that results in another type of waste. Doesn’t opting for a more sustainable choice that just creates new forms of waste defeat the purpose of that choice?
When it comes to truly sustainable packaging, there are few easy decisions or simple answers. This is because the default materials currently widely available to businesses in the food world are often the most wasteful and least sustainable ones. While hopefully, this won’t always be the case, committing to going zero-waste involves swimming upstream against a supply chain powered by single-use plastics. Simply put, opting out of wasteful packaging requires a lot more time, energy, and money than “business as usual.”
Since we built a company around reducing waste but still face the same constraints as any other business, we’re taking a moment to offer transparency around the packaging that we use at Imperfect Foods. With every form of packaging included in an Imperfect delivery, we’ll break down the reasons for using them and why we arrived at the solution we currently have.
The delivery box:
Our delivery boxes are constructed from 100% recycled cardboard. Thankfully, cardboard is one of the easiest materials to creatively reuse or recycle at home. While we’re proud to have a relatively sustainable delivery box, we recognize they are still, well, boxes. This leads us to the obvious question: why can’t we operate like milk deliveries used to, using reusable containers instead of single-use cardboard boxes?
We definitely see potential there, but it’s a complex and costly project. As is often the case when pursuing innovative solutions, the difference between theory and practice is a lot larger in practice than it is in theory. For example, we’ll need to consider the upfront costs associated with the equipment, systems, and people necessary, as well as the process to buy, track, sanitize, dry, and store reusable packaging. We’ll also need to weigh whether the reusable container is made from recyclable materials or fossil fuels to begin with and whether it can be recycled once it reaches the end of its life. We’re actively working through these and other important considerations! If you know of any companies, products, or organizations that could help us move to fully reusable packaging, please get in touch with us and share your ideas.
The gel pack:
For food safety, we include gel packs in deliveries that contain temperature-sensitive items like proteins, eggs, or milk. We also add a gel pack to your order if your delivery is arriving in a particularly hot part of the year so that any items you’ve ordered can stay fresh longer. Gel packs are essential to our mission because whenever we deliver something that isn’t fresh and has to be thrown away, we don’t just disappoint our customers, we also undermine our own mission of preventing food waste.
We can take back your gel packs through our Packaging Return Program. We’ll sanitize and reuse them for another delivery. Most of our gel packs are made with a drain-safe gel in case they do need to be discarded. However, our customers are also encouraged to reuse them at home since they’re perfect for picnics and road trips.
The insulation:
To help our gel packs keep your favorite foods at a safe temperature for longer, we also include insulation. You’ll notice either a silver plastic or paper-based box liner. The paper-based insulation is either recyclable or compostable depending on your local municipality.
The silver insulation bags are made from LDPE plastic, a plastic that can’t generally be curbside recycled. That’s why we make it easy to return them to us through our Packaging Return Program so we can recycle them for you.
Trex also has a recycling program in place to upcycle LDPE (#4) and HDPE (#2) flexible plastic packaging into Earth-friendly composite decking and railings. You can drop off any of your accepted flexible plastics together (including your plastic Imperfect insulation)at a participating store.
Our grocery product packaging:
When we started offering our own grocery items, like scarred almonds and not-quite-tricolor quinoa, we ran into the thorny question of what to package them in. While we were initially excited about compostable packaging options, we found that compostable packaging is a complicated option in practice because if the packaging can quickly break down in your compost bin, it may also start degrading while it sits in your pantry. For packaging that is made from bioplastics (compostable at a dedicated facility), the shelf-life is much better. However, because it looks like plastic and many municipalities are not yet equipped to be able to process them, this packaging often ends up in the landfill or gets mistakenly put in the recycling stream.
We landed on using recyclable plastic packaging made from recycled content for most of our Imperfect items. You can follow these instructions to recycle this #2 plastic at a participating store to be upcycled into outdoor living products. We also work hard to avoid packaging in our orders wherever we can to make your life simpler and less wasteful.
The future of our packaging:
One day, we hope to deliver a box of groceries that not only prevents waste in the food system, but also creates no packaging waste in the process. While it’s a major long-term priority for our company, it’s going to take us time and a significant investment of resources to get there. Until that day, we promise to work to find more sustainable solutions and offer transparency about why we make our decisions.
We hope this overview has helped you understand the work we’ve done so far around sustainable packaging. We’re committed to exploring the best, most sustainable options and innovate whenever and however we can. Sustainability is a constant dialog between our goals and our circumstances, and we appreciate your input as we learn and grow!
A Note for Imperfect Customers: To learn more about our approach to avoiding packaging in your orders, head here. To learn how to get involved in our Packaging Return Program, head here.
