Ziploc Bags

In this standardised, infection-obsessed 21st century, it's hard to find foods that aren't packaged in some sort of plastic, often enough several layers, one on top of the other. In most cases, this wrapping needs to be more-or-less ripped to shreds before you can get to the actual product. And any leftovers must subsequently be re-wrapped in cling-film or placed in a Tupperware or similar plastic container. As such, the same product needs a series of mostly single-use plastic coverings over the course of its consumer lifetime from farm to factory to fridge to fecal matter.

For this reason, I am particularly pleased by the extremely widespread use of Ziploc bags in American retailing, packaging which not only enables foods to be kept fresh prior to and after sale but - because you keep the food in its original recipient - helps reduce the environmental impact of consumer food packaging (not to mention the amount of non-recyclable rubbish it leaves behind).

Now, I bet there's someone out there who knows that Ziplock bags are actually the Devil's own instrument because - I don't know - it takes five types of highly-toxic plastic to make that clever seal, the original recipe was stolen from a subsequently extinct Amazonian tribe, the production of each bag uses up 15 barrels of rare Togoan crude oil and several gigawatts of energy, the employees are all indentured, non-unionised near-slaves, or the waste product of the Ziploc manufacturing process is simultaneously polluting all the streams in Bangladesh or wiping out 7 species of insect every second.

But I sincerely hope not. Because I really, really love them.