Leads and Angles for Local Reporting
Here are a set of suggestions for reporting projects that build on Orb Media’s work. They are designed to help your audience learn about the trade-offs within disposable food packaging and make informed choices for their health and the environment.
1. What are local and independent restaurants, cafes and other eateries in your community doing with food service ware during this pandemic?
Can they provide statistics to the amount of disposable foodware being used now versus before? Are they spending differently on such foodware?
What specific products are they buying, and why? If applicable, did they consider safer and more sustainable alternatives? What resources do they turn to when making such decisions?
In cases where dine-in services (whether indoors or outdoors) are offered, do they use any reusable tableware? Why or why not, and do they consider washed reusables as being more, less or equally safe for customers and employees than disposables?
Have restaurant owners had any creative solutions for using reusable containers?
How do customers feel about the increasing use of disposables? Are they aware of the potential health and environmental impacts? If so, are there certain types of takeout containers (and by extension eateries) that they would prefer to avoid during COVID-19?
If you can speak with owners or managers of various local eateries, take this opportunity to explore the subject of using disposable food service ware during COVID-19. Evaluate their responses using our assessment methodology, and consider if you can potentially offer your readers safer alternatives to disposable foodware.
2. What are larger food service providers in your area, including chain restaurants, markets, hotels and universities, doing with regard to food packaging during COVID-19?
How have businesses or services changed during the pandemic, whether locally, regionally or system/chain-wide?
How much more to-go, takeout and delivery are food service providers doing now than before the pandemic? Do local/regional trends differ from chain-wide averages?
Are traditional, sit-down restaurants and dining halls still offering indoor dining or just outdoor/takeout services?
What are the implications of this on the use of disposable food service ware as well as the health and environmental concerns?
Have food service providers reconsidered, or are they reconsidering, their use of disposable food packaging? This may include shifting to alternatives that are less safe and/or sustainable, owing to limited availability or increased costs of preferred materials. What are the trade-offs involved when making this turn?
3. Explore the Retailer and Brand Initiative database recently published by the Food Packaging Forum to identify what commitments companies and institutions in your area are making with regard to food packaging. Use the food packaging assessment methodology included in this package to evaluate these decisions.
How much progress have they made — and when will they meet (or have they already met) their goal?
How might COVID-19 have affected progress toward their goal?
If they have not made any commitments, what are the reasons for this?
4. Does your community have access to commercial-scale composting?
Most compostable foodware is designed to be composted in a carefully-managed commercial facility, which is designed to handle a very high volume of organic waste. This is because backyard compost bins and piles are not set with the necessary conditions (e.g. having high enough temperatures) to break down packaging in a timely manner. Bioplastics like PLA, in particular, require commercial or ‘industrial’ composting facilities to break down within its stipulated 12-week period.
Not all communities have access to commercial composting necessary for breaking down food packaging. In such cases, compostable foodware use cannot address sustainability and health concerns, as experts we consulted confirm. Without commercial composting facilities, bioplastics and food-soiled containers, which cannot be recycled in traditional waste streams will only end up in landfills or the incinerator.
This could mean that your community may be paying more for compostable foodware that cannot be composted. Depending on a variety of factors, including raw materials sourcing and greenhouse gas emissions associated with disposal and decomposition, compostable foodware can have more serious implications for the environment than their recyclable, petroleum-based counterparts.
Do residents and/or businesses where you live have access to commercial/industrial composting facilities? Do these facilities accept compostable packaging, including bioplastics? If not, explore the ramifications.
Do local waste haulers take in compostable food packaging together with other organics in the green-waste bin?
Otherwise, where do compostable packaging go, and what happens to it afterwards?
If landfilled, do facilities actively convert landfill gas to energy?
5. How has your community responded to the health and environmental risks of disposable food service ware? Have these issues been politicized?
This October, Canada announced a nationwide ban on single-use plastics. This means, by the end of 2021, Canadians will no longer be allowed to use checkout bags, straws, stir sticks, six-pack rings, cutlery and foodware made from hard-to-recycle plastics. Meanwhile, the plastics industry has used the pandemic to fight plastic bag bans. According to the New York Times, the U.S. “plastic bag industry, battered by a wave of bans nationwide, is using the coronavirus crisis to try to block laws prohibiting single-use plastic.” Similar initiatives are happening globally. In addition, demand for single-use plastic has increased as a result of the pandemic. Coupled with the limited availability of safer and more sustainable alternatives, some communities have appeared to ease enforcement of existing single-use plastic bans.
Are there any existing or proposed bans on single-use plastic, including polystyrene/styrofoam, straws, etc in your community?
If proposed, what arguments are being put out by those for and against the ban, and how has COVID-19 shaped conversations on either side?
If bans are already in place, are they being enforced?
6. What is in the container you’re eating from right now?
Pick a common container from a popular restaurant or chain in your area and test it with the help of a chemical lab. Then, use the Food Contact Chemicals database to see if it contains chemicals that have been identified as potentially toxic to health.
7. Follow the lifecycle of a disposable food container in your community.
Just like this classic podcast that follows a single T-shirt through the global economy, identify one type of single disposable container and follow it through its life cycle from creation to disposal.
What chemicals does the container come into contact with, or transfer, along the way?
How does it affect the global environment around it?
To learn how to track environmental impact, refer to Orb Media’s disposable food ware life cycle graphic.
8. Ask several people in your community to do a “food container challenge” by tracking and researching the containers they eat from in a normal week.
As a step further, you can test several of those containers for a more complete vision of their chemical composition.
What health concerns come up from the packaging in this challenge?
What percentage of packaging is being recycled, composted or sent to the landfill?
What can participants do differently to reduce their consumption?
For additional social media engagement, you may challenge audiences to share their results or changes in behavior on social media.
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