Bag the Box Environmentally Saving on Packaging

You know we’re trying to be more green and earth friendly around here on MomStart. I’m learning as I go, and it’s been quite a process on some things and quite easier on others. I’ve recently learned that I might even have to make some changes in products that I buy. Would you go out of your way and buy different products to make your carbon footprint smaller?

One way is to pay attention to the packaging the product comes in. You can make environmentally friendly switches with your morning bowl of cereal.  Earth Day may have passed but we can continue to make good choices, choose to “Bag-the-Box” and create less waste with Malt-O-Meal cereals! We received a sample of the Malt-O-Meal Blueberry Spooners and while the kids are enjoying them, the packaging was just a simple bag, instead of a box with a cereal bag in it, thus saving the box. And my husband disposed of the packaging before I was able to take a picture of it.

Malt-O-Meal is leading the charge in the way that people think about breakfast cereal by creating innovative products and processes that use fewer natural resources and create less waste.  One simple way they are doing this is by producing cereal in a bag and urging consumers to “Bag-the-Box” to reduce waste and lessen the impact on the environment. Just how wasteful is it to package cereal in a box?

Check it out:

• By packaging their cereal in a bag and eliminating the unnecessary use of a box, Malt-O-Meal has reduced the amount of packaging that consumers have to dispose of by 75 percent.
• Each year the United States produces 2.3 billion cereal boxes.  That’s enough paperboard to build not one, but almost three great pyramids!
•    It takes 345 million pounds of paperboard to make a one year’s supply of cereal boxes. That’s the weight of 734,747 jumbo jets.
•    By skipping the box and producing their cereal in a bag, Malt-O-Meal has saved 156 million pounds of paperboard since 2001. If those boxes were laid end-to-end they would reach three quarters of the way to the moon or go around the moon 26 times! 
•    It takes 2.4 trillion BTU’s of energy to power the plants that make the boxes. That is enough to power 26,000 homes.  Additionally, the plants that make the boxes generate waste as well:

• As much particle air emissions as 31,000 city buses
• As much greenhouse gas as 50,000 cars
• Enough solid waste to fill 4,677 garbage trucks
• Enough wastewater to fill 506 Olympic swimming pools

But Malt-O-Meal doesn’t stop there, they do much much more for the environment. 100 percent of the electricity used in the production of Malt-O-Meal cereals is offset by the purchase of wind credits and the company also participates in “upcycling” programs without adversely impacting the cost of its products.

We received samples to facilitate this review.