Plastic Innovations: Food

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Plastics Can Help You Save Money and Reduce Food Waste</h1>
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In today’s cost-conscious economy, consumers are making choices to help them stretch every dollar. In the kitchen, this can mean cutting down on dining out, eating smaller portions, reusing leftovers or buying in bulk and making more of an effort to reduce food waste.</div>
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Nearly two-thirds of Americans have changed their food consumption patterns because of the economy and 80 percent of Americans say their families make a point of eating leftovers to save money, according a recent survey conducted on behalf of <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Plastics Make it Possible</em><span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 10px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;">SM</span>. Other findings from the survey show that 72 percent of Americans pack lunch for themselves or their children and 94 percent of Americans feel good when they store and reuse food rather than throwing it away. Women are more likely to eat leftovers for lunch, bring home leftovers from restaurants or parties and cook larger quantities to provide several meals.</div>
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“I think what we’re seeing today is very much a ‘back to basics’ approach when it comes to meal time,” said Steve Russell, vice president of the Plastics Division for the American Chemistry Council. “Times are tougher so Americans are taking home leftovers from restaurants and cooking more meals themselves. Proper storage of fresh food and leftovers goes a long way to helping ensure consumers get the most out of every meal.”</div>
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Following are some simple storage and preparation tips that can help reduce or extend food budgets:</div>
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• <strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Store and eat those leftovers!</strong> There are so many ways to use leftovers – from ready-to-eat lunches to creating new meals from leftover ingredients to freezing them for later use. Storing leftovers in air-tight plastic containers can help keep them fresher longer. Transfer restaurant leftovers to sealed plastic containers as soon as you get home. If you won’t be able to eat your leftovers within a few days, immediately transfer them to plastic containers or sealable bags that are made especially for the freezer.</div>
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• <strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Cook once, eat for a week!</strong> Planning meals in advance can help save money and precious time. About four in five Americans said that plastic food containers and plastic wrap have made planning family meals easier. With the help of airtight plastic bags and containers, it’s easy to prepare and conveniently store an entire week’s worth of meals at once. This helps planners to purchase ingredients when they’re on sale.</div>
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• <strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Pack your own.</strong> Packing lunch instead of eating out can save money, and the wide variety of plastic bags and containers available today don’t just keep food fresh, they can help control portion size, which is important when trying to lose or maintain your weight. In fact, 56 percent of Americans say they are looking for products that help them practice portion control. And for those who are battling the bulge or just trying to eat healthy, there are also new plastic containers and wraps that are designed to keep fruit and vegetables fresher even longer.</div>
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Plastics Can Help You Save Money and Reduce Food Waste

Plastics Can Help You Save Money and Reduce Food Waste In today’s cost-conscious economy, consumers are making choices to help them s...

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Frozen Food + Plastic Packaging = Less Food, Packaging Waste</h1>
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<i style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Food waste is a global problem with many causes. Part of a series on the topic, this article focuses on how plastics used in frozen food packaging help reduce food (and packaging) waste.</i></div>
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How much food do we Americans throw out each year? It’s probably more than you think.</div>
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Although calculating food waste is a tricky endeavor, some experts estimate that food loss—from the farm through distribution to our table—is approximately 40 percent in the U.S.</div>
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Forty percent!</div>
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And here’s another gloomy statistic—according to <a href="http://www.epa.gov/foodrecovery/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #f05b08; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">EPA</a>, more <i style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">food</i> becomes municipal solid waste “than any other single material … In 2010 alone, more than 34 million tons of food waste was generated.</div>
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Just imagine all the time, energy, and resources involved in growing, protecting, delivering, preparing, and serving that food, as well as the accompanying impact on the environment. And then imagine simply throwing it all away. What a waste … And how is this sustainable?</div>
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While those are national figures, there are steps many of us take as individuals and families to waste less food. Here’s a look at one …</div>
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<b style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Plastic Packaging and Frozen Food</b></div>
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Although we all enjoy meals made from scratch with locally sourced foods, we can’t always buy local or find the right fresh ingredients at the local market. And sometimes we just don’t have the time to prepare such a meal (working late, daughter’s soccer match, son’s recital, second job, etc.). In those cases, we often rely on food from the grocer’s freezer section, due to convenience, availability of a broad variety of options, easy meal prep, and more.</div>
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And by doing so, we (perhaps unwittingly) often decrease food waste—which is frequently made possible by plastics.</div>
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Modern frozen food packaging has advanced dramatically since the 1920s when Clarence Birdseye developed methods for quick freezing foods. While frozen food today is packaged in many materials, technological advances coupled with the rise of the microwave have made plastics the go-to choice for many frozen food choices, from vegetable medleys to ready-to-heat meals to gourmet ice cream. Plastic packaging often leads to less food waste by helping preserve fresh flavors in frozen food, reducing spoilage and significantly extending shelf life.</div>
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And thin, lightweight plastic packaging also leads to less <i style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">packaging</i> waste. For example, many frozen ready-to-heat meals such as stir-fries now are packaged in thin, lightweight plastics that help preserve freshness. Today we can create quick and easy meals using minimalist packaging that can be scrunched up to about the size of a poker chip.</div>
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So we can save more food and grocery money and create less waste.</div>
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Here are some examples of how plastics help reduce frozen food and packaging waste:</div>
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<li style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 4px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Airtight Freezer Foods</i></b><b style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">:</b> Under-protected food stored in the freezer absorbs nasty odors and flavors and then dries out, resulting in “freezer burn” and wasted food. Factory sealed plastic containers and bags help preserve the flavor, texture and nutrients of food by locking out air. So we can enjoy ripe-picked fruits and vegetables that don’t spoil … find wild-caught, individually wrapped salmon filets from Alaska … and buy all sorts of prepared meals that create no food scrap waste. All protected by thin, lightweight plastics.</li>
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<li style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 4px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Active” Packaging</i></b><b style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">:</b> Sometimes called “intelligent” or “smart” packaging, active packaging helps protect both fresh and frozen food by doing more than simply containing it. For example, antimicrobials can be incorporated into the plastics used in packaging—this can help mitigate the growth of harmful microorganisms, which helps preserve food quality and results in less spoilage and waste.</li>
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<li style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 4px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Plastic Steamer Bags</i></b><b style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">:</b> Many frozen food makers now sell a large variety of side and main dishes in lightweight plastic pouches designed for heating in the microwave. Consumers simply place the frozen package in the microwave, and moisture steams the food inside plastic pouch—in one simple step, with little cleanup and no food prep waste. These pouches now vary from single-serve to family size, so we can buy only the amount we need to cook.</li>
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<li style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 4px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Do-it-Ourselves Frozen Foods</i></b><b style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">:</b> Today we package homemade meals, store-bought foods and leftovers in all sizes of plastic zipper bags—and then purge much of the air before freezing (pre-wrapping foods in plastic stretch wrap also helps). To take this concept even further, home vacuum sealers remove nearly all air from the plastic bag prior to sealing, which better protects food to reduce waste—this storage system is particularly popular with warehouse store shoppers and game hunters. Similar to factory sealed packaging, these lightweight plastic bags help reduce the food’s exposure to air, which increases shelf life and reduces spoilage.</li>
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<li style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 4px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Recycled Plastic Packaging</i></b><b style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">:</b> Thanks to new recycling technologies, some frozen food makers are using recycled plastics in their packaging. One major frozen food maker uses plastics from recycled plastic bottles in frozen meal trays for several of its food brands—the company says this diverts an estimated 8 million plastic bottles from the waste stream annually, which results in less valuable material buried in landfills.</li>
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And while these advances may be apparent to us as consumers, we probably don’t often see the plastic packaging that protects bulk food during transport and the enormous amount of frozen food sold to restaurants and institutions, which also helps greatly reduce food waste.</div>
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Innovations in plastics and other technologies will continue to lead to advances in frozen food and other packaging—advances that allow us to store food better and longer, with less packaging waste. That sounds like a recipe we all can follow … and a rather sensible contribution to sustainability.</div>
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Frozen Food + Plastic Packaging = Less Food, Packaging Waste

Frozen Food + Plastic Packaging = Less Food, Packaging Waste Food waste is a global problem with many causes. Part of a series on the...

Plastic Innovations

Plastics Can Help You Save Money and Reduce Food Waste

Frozen Food + Plastic Packaging = Less Food, Packaging Waste

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