Comments Sean Jones has made
Glass usage - the terrible trade-offs
In Europe they did a study on the use of glass drinking bottles vs. the use of plastic (of course I cannot find the study now) using life cycle analysis (LCA). At issue was the German beverage industry not allowing French companies use of plastic water bottles. A report was done on the 'overall' eco-efficiency of plastic bottles vs. glass and plastic. The driver of this is the increased weight and fuel usage for glass bottles.
This analysis was done for Coke when they switched from glass to plastic too. Glass can be rewashed, reused and does not leach chemicals but the water usage and increased fuel usage make it worse in that analysis.
Of course LCA is an art in trade-offs of all materials used, not just energy or petroleum products. Here is a blog with some thoughtful comments.
http://blog.turningtheship.com/?p=33On Umbra on plastic and kids posted 2 years, 8 months ago 13 Responses
Farming with the Wild
I can recommend a good book for those interested in 'beyond organic' and dealing with the issues you have raised here: "Farming with the Wild" by Daniel Imhoff. I think everyone here agrees that just fulfilling organic registration requirements does not meet the objective of sustainable land practices, but at least it moves us in the right direction.
Another issue is that major retailers like Whole Foods are growing and cannot make the small supplier network efficient so turn to larger suppliers. This is clearly an opportunity for someone to create an efficient local food supplier supply chain for major retailers. Tom talked about the issue last August, "Eatin' Good in the Neighborhood".
http://www.grist.org/comments/food/2006/08/16/local/index ...On If organic food is so popular, why are so few farms transitioning their land? posted 2 years, 8 months ago 21 Responses