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fastidious-fusarium · 12 days

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Freeze drying is an awesome process, though not without it's drawbacks. It's ridiculously energy intensive at scale, for instance (food needs to be frozen for it, after all). I assume that in the solarpunk utopia, electricity would be near limitless (in account of all the solar and nuclear energy generation), though. So I guess that's probably a non-issue.

I like the idea of a common processing area, where you can take your raw produce and have it get made into new things that can be later distributed at the communal market. Also a communal warehouse for cold storage makes more sense to me than individual cellars for everyone, as the space would quickly add up and solarpunk cities would need to be densely populated to minimize (and centralize) environmental impacts. Smaller communal freezes and frigdes would also be a cool (hehe) solution to cold storage.

As for packaging options, I still don't beleive glass and ceramic by themselves are the best alternative. Theyr'e fine for preserves and liquid foods, but you wouldn't store potato chips in a mason jar, would you? I mean I guess you could, but it probably would be extremely cumbersome. Also imagine having to haul 10 or 20 glass containers of different sizes back to the commons every time you need a refill of your groceries.

I for one don't think we should discount plastic entirely. After all, most of it's current issues come from it being non-reusable. Food-safe plastics that are made to be reusable could be a solution, in particular for foods that don't need to be heat-treated after being packaged. Plastic is also recyclable (although decidedly not repairable), and recycling plastic is far less energy intensive than recycling glass.

There's also stainless steel, which has the current issue of being extremely expensive when compared to glass, plastic, and regular steel. However, if cost becomes less of an issue because the container is designed to be reused and shared by a community, it could be a decent choice. Stainless steel containers can be easily repaired if damaged and also recycled at the end of their (probably extremely long) life.

I know all of this flies in the face of the usual cottagecore aesthetic of solarpunk, but if the technology exists it should be put to use for the benefit of humanity. Solarpunk is, after all, a look into a brighter future, not to 'the good ol' days'.

But idk, I'm rambling again. I find all of this stuff honestly fascinating, and could probably write on an on forever about this.

So i was thinking about the whole solarpunk chobani oatmilk ad (as depicted here) and a comment someone made in a different post (that I now can't find) where they said something along the lines of (paraphrasing) 'the marketing people at chobani being unable to imagine a future where their brand had ditched single-use containers in favor of a sustainable alternative'. And I started thinking how will food packaging look like in the solarpunk utopia?

Modern food packaging responds (mostly) to the needs of the globalized supply chain, where food products need to be moved great distances without being damaged and while taking up as little space and energy as possible. Packaging also needs to be made of the cheapest materials available, hence the preference for disposable containers made of light materials (cardboard, plastic, aluminium, paper, etc.). You don't want your package to be worth more than what it contains (although with some food products, that is close to being the case).

The comment I referenced earlier suggested using reusable glass containers as an example of a sustainable alternative to single-use containers. That makes sense, and there is historical (and current) precedent for such kinds of food containers. Just ask your parents (or grandparents, I guess) how milk used to be delivered to homes in the good ol' days.

In a more recent example, some places still use reusable (returnable) containers for products such as beer and (even!) Coca-cola, where you pay an initial fee for the container and get reimbursed once you return it, or you can exchange the empty container for a full one by paying the price of the product minus the container fee.

This solution, however, is still within the framework of the global supply chain of modern capitalism. In the solarpunk utopia, the goal would be to reduce (reuse, repair, recycle) the breadth of our current supply chain by prioritizing local consumption and disinsentivizing long-distance trade.

This train of thought led me to the question of wether processed, pre-packaged food would even be a thing in the solarpunk utopia. After all, if we are trying to consume only what is locally sourced, one of the main purposes of preserved (and thus packaged) food goes away. No need for bottled orange juice when you can just go to the commons bin and grab a kilo of fresh oranges to make your own.

Further, once there is no capitalism, the "convenience" angle of processed, packaged food also appears to go away. You don't have to work 9 hours a day, 6 days a week anymore. You have the time and resources necessary to make your own damn fresh orange juice, so why bother with the bottled stuff?

Well for one, not everything is as easy and convenient to do by yourself as orange juice. Fermented foods (cheese, wine, beer, soy sauce, even pickles and yogurt), bread and pastries and cakes, carbonated drinks, jams and marmalade, butter, mayonnaise, cured meats and fish, and (yes) almond milk are all tricky to make properly, take a long time to be made and/or are energy and resource intensive. The need for these kinds of foods will remain as long as we are human and find pleasure in eating and trying new things. Also, the need for mass-produced food does not go away with capitalism, after all we have a population of 10 billion humans with different dietary needs that need to be fed. Food safety standards must still be enforced and probably will be even more stringent when corporate profits are no longer standing in the way of progress.

To add to this, a localized supply chain will make food preservation even more important. After all, if you want your population to survive mostly on what can be produced in a 100 km radius, you will have to prepare for food scarcity. Droughts, floods, earthquakes, blizzards, accidents, and even just regular ol' winter (once we've rescued it from the clutches of climate change) don't care how solar your punk is. They will wreck your food supply and your utopia needs to be ready.

So the need for packaged food will remain. The need for food that can stay in a cupboard undisturbed for months (if not years) and remain edible (and reasonably palatable!) will continue to be there.

With all this in mind... what does food packaging look in our solarpunk utopia? Single-use plastics have gone the way of the dodo, as have single-use paper, cardboard, aluminium, glass, and steel. What has replaced them?

I have some ideas, but this post is already ridiculously long, so I'll save them for later. All I'll say for now is I think glass containers are not the way to go. Glass is heavy, fragile, a poor thermal conductor (so heating and cooling processes with glass containers are energy innefficient), and takes up a lot of space. It is also very resource and energy intensive to produce and recycle (so not the most environmentaly friendly in that regard either).

What does a reusable aluminium container look like? That'd be cool I think.

#solarpunk #food science #ramblings

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fastidious-fusarium · 14 days