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I like cheese. But I'm also absent-minded enough that I'll not think to grab a serving from the refrigerator for days, and lazy enough that I'll sometimes skip a snack so that I don't have to pull out the hunk of cheese, cut slices for a plate, then put them back. As a result, my wife buys me those individually plastic-wrapped cheese sticks. It serves the purpose of preserving the servings in between uses, and making for easy distribution (I can hand cheese sticks to several people and they can transport it to their individual lunches, leaving the main bulk in the fridge), but the amount of packaging material is wasteful, even if the wrappers were recyclable. Most science fiction seems to deal with it by either eliminating the packaging by making the food every time (replicators) or employing some futuristic material that magically is cheap to produce and just sort of disappears from the environment.

How might a society with eary 21st century technology solve the issue of convenience of individually-wrapped servings with not producing excess waste?

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  • $\begingroup$ Are you asking about Worldbuilding or have you just become appointed a chair in your local county's waste management board? The short answer is: waste sorting and recycling. If you make the wrappers out of recyclable paper or plastic and make it easy for people to separate paper from plastic from food waste and so on, then there is your solution. Or you simply make the wrapper edible. eater.com/2016/8/21/12575696/… $\endgroup$
    – MichaelK
    Commented Dec 5, 2016 at 16:28
  • $\begingroup$ This is either very broad, or rater opinion based. Either way, it's very difficult for us to answer. This would largely depend on the resources available to your society, as well as their culture. People don't generally like to be inconvenienced, hence the individually wrapped cheese sticks. But we also tend to feel bad about waste, hence recycling. If there was a terrible shortage of resources then individually wrapped cheese sticks might be regarded as an abomination. If we loved our planet terribly then they might be wrapped in some kind of biodegradable material. $\endgroup$
    – AndreiROM
    Commented Dec 5, 2016 at 16:31
  • $\begingroup$ :) Worldbuilding. I want to include my snacking habits in my book while suggesting potential world-changing habits. $\endgroup$
    – Sean Duggan
    Commented Dec 5, 2016 at 16:32
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    $\begingroup$ This belongs on Sustainability.SE, and should be migrated there. $\endgroup$
    – kingledion
    Commented Dec 5, 2016 at 16:54
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    $\begingroup$ As Andrei pointed out, this is highly subject to the specifics of the culture. Erin Thursby's solution, which is based around laws and fines, will work in societies which are willing to legislate morality, but in other cultures would be a non-starter. If you move it to Sustainability.SE, this question can be asked in context of a culture (such as modern American culture). Otherwise, we would need more information about the specific culture enacting these changes before we can come up with a solution for them. $\endgroup$
    – Cort Ammon
    Commented Dec 5, 2016 at 17:38

1 Answer 1

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A shift in laws and make a society that looks nothing like the one we currently have.

Sustainability model

In this case, you aren't allowed to travel, and food and goods are not permitted to travel over long distances. Packaging must be biodegradable or you will face strict fines.

Make people AND Companies pay for how much garbage they produce

If you produce any waste that's not recyclable, you pay a per-pound fee. Watch how quickly consumers will change their habits, and how fast companies will work to eliminate packaging.

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  • $\begingroup$ The latter has actually been attempted. In some states, you have to pay a surcharge for using disposable plastic bags instead of reusable ones. $\endgroup$
    – Cort Ammon
    Commented Dec 5, 2016 at 16:51
  • $\begingroup$ And it works, it just isn't enough. $\endgroup$
    – Erin Thursby
    Commented Dec 5, 2016 at 17:10

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