By: Paige Merritt
First published July 2011, last updated March 2013
A common household waste item is the egg carton – it’s waste that in many cases doesn’t need to be taking space in landfill.
According to data from the American egg board; in 2011, 247.8 eggs per person were consumed in the USA (egg in shell and in products).
It’s a lot of eggs and while not all are transported in the egg cartons we see in the supermarket; it would still work out to be many millions of cartons each year being discarded.
An egg carton may be made from plastics such as Styrofoam or fromrecycled paper and molded pulp. One way to make your egg consumption a little more environmentally friendly is to ensure you buy eggs in paper based packaging as styrofoam is difficult to recycle.
Recycling egg cartons
If the eggs you buy are in plastic packaging that isn’t styrofoam; look for a triangle with a number inside it stamped on the packaging. This is a plastic resin code and depending on the number, it may be possible to place this packaging in your recycling bin.
Even though the paper based version of the packaging is biodegradable, when thrown in with your general household rubbish it will likely wind up in landfill where the decomposition process takes a lot longer and take up valuable space.
Additionally, as the waste in landfill is buried, decomposition occurs in an anaerobic environment, which is one without oxygen. Microbes that thrive in anaerobic conditions give off potent greenhouse gases such as methane as they digest material. Methane has a Global Warming Potential (GWP) 62 times the carbon dioxide.
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