Steel lunch boxes: an environmental nightmare.
You may have seen recent advertisements and promotions for lunch boxes made of steel: Healthier! Better for environment! Well, I do not know about healthier, but environmentally, they are a nightmare. At least, as compared to plastic ones.
Here is a picture of two lunch boxes (both about 2 cups in volume) that I own:
The first difference between these two boxes is their weight. The steel lunch box weight about 160 grams (about 5.6 oz), while the plastic one is only about 32 grams (1.1 oz), including the cover. And of course, the more of something you need to make, the bigger impact it will have.
The second difference is that steel making is really dirty business. One need to dig up the ore, smelt it, forge, etc, etc. All that is using a lot of energy and resources, and is producing a lot of pollution. Compare the CEII for the two lunchboxes:
| Steel | Plastic (polystyrene) |
| 378.5 | 28.1 |
It is incomparable: the damage done to the environment by using the steel boxes is order of magnitude bigger than by using plastic ones. So please, do not be deceived! Steel is not environmentally friendly -- quite the opposite.
Comments
2 comments postedI am not discounting the environmental impact difference, but I can tell you I would say the steel one is going to last a lot longer than the plastic. I use ones similar to ones on the left and after awhile i have problems with the lids. and where do you think they go after that? I would say modify the one on the right to include a metal lid with small rubber gasket and clasp and it's something you can have for life, thus bridging the gap, or exceeding it (when accounting for multiple versions of the other).
You are perfectly right - the lifespan of the two compared items should be taken into account. I have not done it explicitly in this article, as I did not find reliable statistics of the lifespans of the plastic and steel boxes. I found anecdotal evidence though. On one hand people claim their 25 years old tupperware is still going strong, on the other people complaining their metal boxes rusted after few dishwasher cycle, and needed to be replaced. Others claiming the plastic pieces of cr*p had to be thrown away after a month, while the grandpa's metal box is still in use. From my own experience, I have noticed that my plastic boxes tend to live some 5 years (and break), while metal ones get banged, scratched, bended and chipped, and are replaced after similar period, but more for aesthetic reasons. Still, if the plastic box lasts 5 years, then the metal box would need to be used for about 65 years to make up the difference in environmental cost.
Please note that I do not make any health-related comparison between these two - I know some people do not like plastic because of real or imagined danger of chemicals existing and possibly leaking from the plastic.