The wrap, however, may last more than a century. Shrink-wrap a cucumber in polyethylene and its shelf life stretches from three days to 14. Pouches, it turns out, are kryptonite to recycling companies, which canвЂ™t separate their heterogenous layers. But their end-of-life prospects are bleak. ItвЂ™s estimated that Americans go through 92 billion pouches a year.

Today the pouch is ubiquitous, holding everything from tuna to tomato paste, pet food to pickles. Made of melded, ultrathin layers of plastic and aluminum foil, the pouches could be shipped flat-saving room-and they kept food fresh without refrigeration. In the 1970s, Capri Sun began pouring its juice drinks into gusseted pouches that weighed less than a plastic bottle of equivalent volume. The stage was set for a throwaway future. While cellophane was compostable, the oil-based films-and the rigid plastic containers that followed-were not. Chemists later imitated this bio-based polymer with polyvinyl chloride and later less toxic polyethylene, creating Saran Wrap. Soon after the turn of the 20 th century, food companies began using a flexible wrap called cellophane, made from plants. And the feedstock for plastic is widely available and incredibly cheap. The wrap, however, may last more than a century.) Plastic is strong and clear, enabling consumers to see what theyвЂ™re buying. (Shrink-wrap a cucumber in polyethylene and its shelf life stretches from three days to 14. Plastic protects food over long journeys, guarding it against pressure, humidity, light, and the bacteria that accelerate rot. Manufacturers continue to make bottles and shrink-wraps ever thinner, but the fact remains: plastics are made from nonrenewable resources, either oil or natural gas, and most never see a second life.Д«ut plastic is quite good at what it does, which makes replacing it so devilishly difficult. Most recycled plastics get shredded, melted, and reformed into goods-like lumber, fleece, or carpeting-still eventually bound for landfills. Recycling requires energy, water, and the transport of materials. More conscientious recycling would be a boon, but itвЂ™s no panacea.

But how did the world become so dependent on it in the first place? The problem is expected to get worse as those nations grow richer and inevitably start consuming more packaged foods, and as many others in an increasingly convenience-obsessed world continue to purchase meal-kit and grocery services-which generate considerable packaging-and take-out foods. Lightweight and floatable, plastic that escapes collection flows into our oceans-nine million tons annually-most of it from developing nations that lack the infrastructure to manage it. Of the 78 million metric tons of plastic packaging produced globally each year, a mere 14 percent is recycled. вЂњWeвЂ™re seeing a tremendous acceleration in the demand for packaging alternatives as the unintended consequences of plastics become more visible, both locally and globally,вЂќ says Kate Daly, of Closed Loop Partners, a social-impact investment fund that focuses on waste. When lunch is over, everything gets pitched into a compost bin, which in an ideal world is, of course, never far away. Another duo crafted an ingenious paperboard box with a fold-it-yourself fork/spoon combo that diners tear from a perforated edge (above). One team designed sheets of black plastic that folded into take-out containers (seen in image above) and could be returned to a collection point, sanitized, and reused ad infinitum by a consortium of take-out chains. They hand-shaped bowls from mycelium, the threadlike roots of mushrooms. Their brief? To create new forms of food packaging to replace the unsustainable designs upon which modern life seems to depend: single-use plastic beverage cups, lids, straws, and bottles.ДЇocusing on the long-lived detritus that typically accompanies take-out meals, the students baked and 3D-printed straws made of sugar and agar-a gelatinous substance derived from seaweed. A version of this story appears in the August 2019 issue of National Geographic magazine.ДЄround tables strewn with Exacto knives, bowls, cutting boards, tape, funnels, and bags of hemp powder, mushroom parts, and sugar, a dozen graduate students from the packaging and industrial-design departments at Pratt Institute, in Brooklyn, New York, brainstormed.

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