Contamination of food from recycled cardboard

When recycled cardboard is used in food packaging it risks contaminating the food. Food rapidly absorbs the mineral oils from printing inks which are contained in recycled cardboard. Food becomes contaminated to many times the recommended limits of mineral oils.

Even if food is packaged in clean boxes, it is contaminated if transported in corrugated boxes made from recycled cardboard.

Reusing has advantages over recycling.

Precycling

Precyclers are people who come prepared for shopping and seek out shops where they can buy only what they need, without all that extra packaging which they have to pay for and then dispose of. Most packaging which we throw away each week comes from food, so precyclers have to be most prepared when they go shopping for food (in the UK, 4.7m tonnes out of 5.9m tonnes of packaging waste is food related). Most shops don’t give you the option, you just have to buy the packaging as well as what you want to buy, so precyclers collect information about which shops meet their needs.
The precycling movement began in Berkley, California in 1988. It is just that much better than recycling. Also known as “wombles”, precyclers refuse junk mail, carry precycling kits including sandwich bags and cutlery, and read on the internet, refusing paper pulp news sources.
Buying unpackaged is initially inconvenient, until you know all the different suppliers. A shop in North London called Unpackaged even gives a discount if you bring your own container.
People practise precycling for ecological and economic reasons. Those who prefer to eat organic food already pay a premium, so paying for extra packaging as well makes no sense. In times of economic difficulties, where the budget has to be rationalised, it is preferable to precycle organic food instead of buying dearer packaged organics, rather than substituting cheaper packaged non-organic food from a supermarket and throwing your money away.

Which recyclable bags?

Many US shopping chains are now promoting reusable shopping bags and no longer give away free throw-away bags. In some cities, such as San Francisco, the singlet bags are banned in supermarkets and chain stores. It is however proving to be difficult to determine what really is an environmentally responsible bag. Here are some of the concerns:

• Often bags are made in China and shipped thousands of kilometers using unique fossil fuels while polluting the oceans and shores with the exhaust from dirty marine fuel just to get them to the place where they are to be reused
• Often bags are made of plastic which takes a long time to decompose. They can't be washed.
  
• If bags are not reused they are more environmentally damaging than disposable thin bags because they are made with more solid materials.
• Many cheap recyclable bags are made in Chinese factories from polypropylene, using 28 times as much energy as a disposable bag
• Cotton bags can require a large amount of water and energy to produce and may use harsh chemical dyes. However they can be washed and reused for a long time like clothing.
  
• Paper bags destroy trees and the factories pollute water and air. They can be reused many times but usually aren't.
  

The biggest problem is to get people to use reusable bags even after they buy them. But at the same time disposable plastic bags are becoming unpopular. 100 billion plastic bags are thrown away each year in the US.
Producers of reusable bags have reported big increases in sales.