For any of my fellow wine lovers who are not connoisseurs, you might identify with selecting a bottle by the label alone. Uniquely shaped wine bottles with approachable labels often catch my eye. The packaging of a product is your first impression, and sometimes the only impression that matters, so I spent a lot of time asking myself what type of bottle to use, what should the label look like, and what type of cap would provide the easiest opening and closing experience?

In thinking about the type of packaging I wanted to use for BAM, I had a lot of ideas and even more questions about what I needed and why.

The most important factor I considered when selecting the type of bottle to use for this beverage was sustainability. Like most people, I have been trained to think plastic = bad. But upon researching this topic, I was surprised to find that plastic in many ways was the best option.

I reached out to Sue Selke, a professor emeritus at the Michigan State University School of Packaging. She holds MS and PhD degrees in chemical engineering. Sue recently retired from a 30+ year career focused on packaging sustainability, including plastics recycling, biodegradable and biobased plastics, composites of plastics with natural fibers, life cycle assessment, and other areas.

Simply put, Sue is the expert on sustainable packaging.

Merriam-Webster defines “sustainable” as “able to be used without being completely used up or destroyed.” This definition is fairly ambiguous and hard to understand from a general consumer point of view. The word “sustainable” seems to have many meanings, depending on who you’re talking to, or what company is marketing to you.

Sue gave her own definition of sustainability a bit more simply. “Meeting our own needs without messing up the needs of those who come after us,” she said. “Another way I look at it is trying to minimize the overall environmental impact of the things we do. As part of that, paying the most attention to the things that cause the most critical problems.”

This makes a bit more sense to me! But how do we define the “most critical problems” and how do our everyday choices, like what type of plant-based milk to buy -- the one in a carton, in plastic, or in glass -- affect sustainability overall?

I wanted a simple answer from Sue: which type of bottle is best, but she put it bluntly saying, “I'm not giving you clear answers because there are not clear answers.”

I considered all types of materials from aluminum and glass to various types of plastic and cardboard. So, what did Sue recommend? There were three main takeaways from our hour long Zoom conversation:

It’s Crucial To Use What You Buy

Surprisingly, Sue said, “the most impactful decision a consumer can make actually is going to be to choose the product that they are going to fully use.” In the United States, up to 40% of the food supply goes to waste. This has hugely detrimental impacts on our society and on the environment, more so than any package you’d select. Why?

“The chances are excellent that there are more environmental impacts associated with production of the product than with the production of the package,” Sue said. “If you're wasting the product then you are probably doing a bad thing.”

Dumping out an unused portion of BAM or any other product means you are tossing out the land, water, labor, energy and all the other inputs that went into producing, processing, transporting, preparing, and storing that product. So, when you buy a product, do your best to consume it in full. BAM is bottled in a manageable size bottle, 28 FL OZ. We worked hard to extend the shelf-life naturally for as long as possible. Keeping your product refrigerated and using it within the 7-10 days it lasts is ideal. If you have to toss it, a good trick to do instead is to pour our Buckwheat Milk into an ice cube tray and freeze it. That way, you can use the frozen ice cubes in a smoothie later on -- delicious, and sustainable!

Glass Is Just As Manufactured As Plastic

When I started looking at packaging I was almost certain I would use a glass bottle. I thought glass was more “natural” and better for the environment than plastic. Sue set me straight.

“I've encountered over and over again this perception that plastics are not natural and glass somehow is. No, it is not,” Sue said. “Glass is just as manufactured as the plastic is.”

But, glass does have an advantage over plastic: it can be reused. Doesn’t that make it a better option than plastic, I asked Sue? To that, she admitted that yes, refillable glass is “probably the best environmental option provided it is reused at least X number of times.” But what is X? The number of times is at least 5 and up to 20, and it depends on where you are geographically located because transportation is a major factor in considering the impact glass has on the environment. “Glass takes a lot more energy, fossil fuel energy to make in the first place than plastic does,” Sue said.

On top of that, glass is much heavier than plastic. ”You're not thinking about the larger amount of space occupied by that glass bottle during the transportation process, which means more pallets, perhaps more corrugated boxes, all the other things that go into shipping,” Sue said.

“Stepping back farther, you're not thinking about the much greater amount of energy that went into making that glass bottle in the first place compared to the plastic bottle,” Sue added.

For most of us, we think solely about what we do with the bottle or any product once we have it, but it’s important to step back and think about the entire supply chain and all the factors that impact sustainability.

Simply put, “If you're not going to use a glass bottle at least 5 times, then glass is not the best option.”

Be a Critical Thinker

The most important advice Sue gave was to be a critical thinker. This is true for everything in life if you ask me!

Sue said it is good to think about the environment when making decisions about what we are buying. Her best advice? “Educate yourself on the issues and do not believe everything you are told.”

For example, if a study says something, it’s important to look at who funded that study. “If it is the paper industry telling you paper is better than plastic, they've got a horse in that race and you might want to take that with a bit of skepticism,” Sue said.

My main takeaway from all of this was that plastic really is not bad, depending on the type of plastic, if you can correctly recycle it, and if you’re consuming the entire product inside.

BAM’s bottles are recyclable. If you can remove the label prior to recycling, it makes the process even easier.