Food Packaging and Transportation Footprint

Food Packaging

Data Collection

Every day during a (normal) school year,  thousands of students throw away packaging waste from their school lunches, without realizing its toll on the environment. The calculators on this page will help illuminate and quantify this impact for you by giving you a concrete number of the emissions produced from your school’s trash.  

The first step is to collect data on the type and amount of food packaging your school uses. Input the following information into each column in Table 1:

1. Column 1 – packaging materials that your school uses. We’ve already listed common packaging items in the table, but add to the list if any items your school uses aren’t present.
2. Column 2 – how much of each item your school uses per school year. You can try calculating how much of each item your school uses per day, and then multiply that by how many days are in your school year. It’s okay if you have to estimate.
3. Column 3 – the average weight (in kg) of each item. To find the average weight of a packaging item, weigh 10 to 25 of the item and then calculate the average weight (the more times you measure the item, the more accurate the average will be). You can do this by going through the trash, finding your item, cleaning it, and weighing it. 

*Note: If your school uses packaging items that are not listed in Table 1, you can add more items by simply clicking “Add Another.” A new row will be added to Table1 and Table 2. Please note that in the “CO2 Impact” column in Table 2 you will have to add the amount of CO2 produced per kg of the item. This value can likely be found by a google search.

Calculations

Based on the data you entered into Table 1, Table 2 automatically calculated the carbon emissions produced from each packaging item! Please note that if you added a new packaging item to Table 1, you will have to add the amount of CO2 produced per kg of the item into the “CO2 Impact” column in Table 2. This value can likely be found by a google search. 

How were the emissions calculated?

The emissions value was found by multiplying the item’s total weight (in kg) by the amount of CO2 produced for every kg of the item. 

In Table 3, the CO2 emissions of each item are added together to get the total CO2 emissions. You can input the number of students in your school to find out how much CO2 was produced per student. This is important because, for instance, one school may have a much larger carbon footprint than another school, but this could simply be due to the size of that school. By dividing by the number of students, the school’s size no longer becomes a factor. 

You’re done! Go to the “Ways to Proceed” tab to see what you can do next.

Keep in mind…. 

Some of the items may have a low environmental impact in their production, but it is important to look at the entire lifecycle of each particular type of packaging. For instance, it has a significantly lower environmental impact to make a plastic bottle than to make a paper cup, plastic is one of the biggest pollutants of our planet and is creating all sorts of unprecedented challenges for our oceans. The reason paper is ultimately better in the long run (as of right now) is because it is biodegradable whereas plastic is not. And though plastic can be recycled, of the plastic waste produced between 1950 and 2015, only 9 percent was recycled because only certain types of plastics can be recycled and there could be even fewer types of plastics recycled depending on where your school sends its recycling (assuming your school does recycle).