When purchasing strawberries or kiwi fruit at the local Loblaw’s, Kroger or Wegmans, one rarely takes into account the packaging that surrounds this food. A closer look reveals packaging that is typically made of a thermoplastic called PETE (Polyethylene terephthalate). While PETE (also goes by PET) containers can be recycled, they cannot be composted and could be costly to landfill. An alternative to PETE is palm fiber – a renewable resource that has the ability to compost in less than 90 days. In comparison to PETE trays, palm fiber trays can be turned into a healthy contribution to soil that can be used to produce tomatoes. Imagine that!

Behind the manufacturing of environmentally preferable packaging solutions such as palm fiber trays is Earthcycle Packaging. Earthcycle approached TerraVeritas, a new company within the TerraChoice family, to come up with a way to quantitatively demonstrate the environmental benefits of this product. This became the Earthcycle Benefits Calculator project.

For this benefits calculator, Earthcycle pint trays were compared to common PETE pint trays. The online benefits calculator tool measures the waste diverted from landfill, the dollar savings (from creation of compost and landfill avoidance), the tons of compost produced, and the tons of tomatoes grown in that compost as a result of choosing to use the Earthcycle pint trays over the PETE trays. The numbers are pretty astonishing. Check out the Earthcycle benefits calculator at: www.earthcycle.com/benefits-calculator.html.

Visit TerraVeritas to see what other projects this validation, verification and sustainability solutions provider is working on at: www.terra-veritas.com.

Posted by KateRusnak in Green business, Green products