Bury or burn?

[Keith_Beef]

I asked that backalong. Nobody answered.

It's hard to find an honest answer. Most of the web pages I've looked at are from the manufacturers or suppliers (who understandably are going to portray their products as being just great) or are from sites with an axe to grind...

I've found one supplier of "ethical products" which sells silicone coated greaseproof paper; while another site states that such silicone coated paper

certainly isn’t biodegradable.
“Experts from the University of Maryland Extension Home and Garden Information Center said, “We would not recommend composting the parchment paper,” but acknowledged that they could not cite specific studies on the topic”

The Gourmet Food Wrap Company supplies what it describes as "natural greaseproof paper [without] any chemical treatments or coatings".

In my ideal world, packaging would be minimal and personalised.

You would wrap your food in paper that identifies you, and if you litter the environment with it, you are identifiable.

I'd have take-away pizza cartons marked at the point of sale with the purchaser's name and address, so that when the carton is abandoned in the middle of the park, the culprits can be identified and fined for littering.[/QUOTE]

 

[Woody girl]

Talking this over with my bestie who like me does all she can to have the tiniest footprint possible she showed me what she uses.
Parchment baking paper.
FSC certified, compostable, unbleached, totaly chlorine free, microwaveable, ovenproof, reuseable, compostable.
She got it from either lakeland or a health food shop. . She can't remember,.. and it is made in Finland. It is brown in colour.
Unfortunately it doesn't seem to have a brand name, and she can't remember how much it cost. But here is our answer.
Her hubby says everything was wrapped in paper and stored in a large biscuit tin in a hole in the ground when he was a kid. So now we have a good blueprint for plastic free camps. gotta be good..

 

[Janne]

Which country is her husband from?

In Scandinavia and Finland it was common to have a walk-in man made 'cave' in the old days. Ever farm had at least one.

 

[Woody girl]

Which country is her husband from?

In Scandinavia and Finland it was common to have a walk-in man made 'cave' in the old days. Ever farm had at least one.

The UK.

 

[Janne]

Just thinking publicly, would a hole not get damp, or even water filled?

It is a superb way to store food, underground.

You can store food outside in UK, using an old, clapped out fridge.
Costs no energy!
The insulation evens out the day/night difference, and protects well against night frosts.

 

[Woody girl]

Just thinking publicly, would a hole not get damp, or even water filled?

It is a superb way to store food, underground.

You can store food outside in UK, using an old, clapped out fridge.
Costs no energy!
The insulation evens out the day/night difference, and protects well against night frosts.

I guess lined with a few stones to make a sink might be a good idea but mostly we go out and about in the summer so realy as long as you don't dig below the water table and have some sort of lid I can't see it being a problem.
I'm not carting a blooming old fridge into the woods just to keep a few sausages and eggs fresh! !!!!!

 

[Broch]

Any container, covered with a thick cloth that's kept wet, will keep the inside cool due to the evaporation of the water (latent heat of evaporation). The trick is to arrange a dripping source of water above or a water bath below (that results in water being wicked up into the cloth). It works in exactly the same way as the terracotta wine coolers.

 

[Janne]

I guess lined with a few stones to make a sink might be a good idea but mostly we go out and about in the summer so realy as long as you don't dig below the water table and have some sort of lid I can't see it being a problem.
I'm not carting a blooming old fridge into the woods just to keep a few sausages and eggs fresh! !!!!!

Not in the forest. In a shady place in your back garden. Milk. Beer. Your favourite Southern Comfort bottle.
Anything you want nice and cool!

 

[Robson Valley]

Outdoors, called a "root-cellar" here. Best for root veg for months.
What's your ambient soil temperature, 30cm down in the ground?

Camping, I think it would be easiest to dig a root cellar pit, couple of cubic feet, and put a camo insulated lid on it.
Use it every time you stop there. Or, bury a Coleman cooler.

 

[Keith_Beef]

Any container, covered with a thick cloth that's kept wet, will keep the inside cool due to the evaporation of the water (latent heat of evaporation). The trick is to arrange a dripping source of water above or a water bath below (that results in water being wicked up into the cloth). It works in exactly the same way as the terracotta wine coolers.

It's just evaporation. This is how my grandmother used to keep her milk fresh through the day, before she got a fridge. My mother remembers (just about) leaving the bottle in a bowl with a tea towel over it, and she taught me the technique when I was a teen, for if ever there was a power cut.

A properly dug cellar should stay at about 12°C all year round... the cellar where I live now is atrocious, and can sometimes reach 20°C in summer. But it feels nice and cool when it's 32°C in the shade above ground.

 

[EdS]

Take it home and recycle.

Or home and waste to energy route.

Don't burn it on camp fire. Combustion needs to to in excess of 800c with rapid stack cooling of the exhaust gases to prevent re-chlorination that leads to the formation of dioxins and furans.

They aren't formed directly by combustion but the uncontrolled reaction of the combustion gases

 

[Jeff Edwards]

The only time I would burn waste on a cooking fire would be at the very end when everything is packed away to avoid any possible contamination. A poorly tummy has the capacity to contaminate a campsite very quickly. But wait then this numpty would want another brew whilst waiting for the fire to cool.
The original post refered to food packaging, or over packaged depending on your opinion. I can remember two nightmares from the late seventy and eighties when baby foods where injected with chemicals and in a seperate incident contaminated with crushed glass, in two seperate "western" countries.
This I believe has lead to the packaging situation we have nowadays and the number of people wishing to harm strangers for various reasons has only increased over the years.
I think the world needs urgent research into safe food packaging which is environmentaly sustainable, 100% recyclable and have no detremental qualities.

 

[SimonL]

Oops - thought this was about how I would wish my body to be disposed of once I'm gone

 

[Wayland]

Since starting this thread I have watched the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall program about plastics which clearly illustrated that many councils were exporting their plastic waste instead of dealing with it properly and locally.

Frankly that makes the considerations even more complex.

I must confess that I am still inclined to get the fire as hot as possible and use that for the small amount of plastic I take on site, obviously not while cooking of course.

 

[Robson Valley]

I like wide mouth plastic jars with screw-top lids.
Attractive packaging to wash out and keep for all sorts of other things.
Paper labels which are easy to soak off.
Most here these days have a safety seal inner topping to peel away.

Some days, I think this even is a bias when I go grocery shopping.

 

[SimonL]

In total agreement with Robson Valley here - I am more than happy to let "future use" influence my purchasing.

 

[Janne]

I love it when they sell Organic produce in a styrofoam tray well wrapped in thin, see through plastic.

Back in the Good Old Days I used styrofoam as a quick fire starter.
Try it, it works well!

To be frank, if you burn a handful of plastic in your camp fire, it does absolutely nothing for the demise of Earth.

We must remember to be realistic.

 

[Robson Valley]

Brand of pasta sauce, "Classico" has many flavors. Good stuff.
The wide mouth glass jars are exactly the right size to take a canning lid.
The glass is embossed with volume measurements as well.
They never get tossed out!

Then you see those stupid Kraft salad dressing bottles.
Signature shape, 15% loss when emptied
and too useless to keep, even for a wasp trap.

Seems to me that some simple federal legislation could designate a range of jar sizes and shapes.
Any encouragement for even a second use has to be a good thing.

 

[Janne]

The original lids food manufacturers are good for a couple of uses.
If they are metal, and you know how to open them the first time. We throw them away once the lid starts rusting.

But I find that lids from some foods still smell after washing. Sauerkraut is one, pickled gherkins another. But those give good service to store nails and bolts in.

 

[Tengu]

I like things that you can re use too.

Containers for my hobbies are a good thing.