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Better business packaging
Working together, we will educate the public and the marketplace about the negative environmental impact on Southern forests caused by business as usual fast food packaging. We will tell these companies that yes they can make changes to protect Southern forests and the rich biodiversity, clean water, clean air and climate protection these forests provide for us. Together we can transform the paper packaging coming out of our forests.
Together we call on these large companies to:
- Reduce their over use of packaging.
- Maximize the use of 100% post-consumer recycled boxboard, a readily available alternative.
- Eliminate paper packaging coming from the most biologically important endangered forests.
- Eliminate paper packaging coming from suppliers that are contributing to the conversion of natural forests into industrial pine plantations.
- Work with packaging suppliers to improve forest management practices through increased use of fiber from responsibly managed forests certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.
- Recycle waste in restaurants to divert paper and other recoverable materials from landfills.
For example, Americans go through 15 billion — yes “B,” billion — disposable hot beverage cups per year. And market projections are to reach 23 billion disposable cups per year by the year 2010! Starbucks alone uses in excess of 1.7 billion paper cups per year. Recently Starbucks shifted away from all virgin fiber to a 10 percent recycled post-consumer cup. That small step forward saves about 11,000 tons of wood and 47 million gallons of wastewater annually.
Indeed, production of 100% recycled paperboard uses 50 percent less energy compared to virgin grades of paperboard, thus significantly reducing the greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere.
Driving the large paper packaging suppliers to adopt more sustainable forestry practices like Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification would limit clearcutting, halt conversion, protect important species and set the stage for restoration of critical wetlands across the region.
Fast food restaurants can also help the amount of waste from their operations going to the landfill by increasing recycling. Approximately 1/3 of all waste produced in a fast food restaurant is paper based and only a small portion of that is recycled.