the ketchup dilemma

I have a dilemma, and that dilemma involves ketchup.  Yes, red, sticky, delicious ketchup.  I am a Midwestern girl, after all, and I have no problem admitting that I love ketchup.  No, I'm not one of those ketchup-on-everything people, but bring out a bag of Alexia oven fries* and a bottle of ketchup disappears pretty quickly.

So I find myself with a conundrum.  Heinz makes organic ketchup, but it is only available in tiny bottles.  Non-organic ketchup, on the other hand, is available in bulk sizes.  Is it better to buy a big bottle of ketchup, thus saving plastic**, or buy lots of tiny bottles of organic ketchup?  (Assuming you recycle of course, which I do.)

Buying organic is important for a lot of reasons, but I find the most compelling and relevant here is economic storytelling.  Economic storytelling is another pet project of mine, being a bit of a market geek (confession: I read the business section first), so let me explain.  Advertising, as I've discussed before, is about telling stories.  Sometimes these are traditional stories, such as the story of the farmer discussed in "stories as motivation," but sometimes they are subtle.  But they all end up telling you: see yourself in this story, with this product, and see your life being better off.

But there is another side to economic storytelling.  Consumers also tell their own economic stories.  I first started thinking about this when Artur asked me why I bought a Prius.  I rambled a bit about wanting one for a while, thinking they're cute, whatever, and he responds, "There is only one reason to buy a Prius, and that reason is to tell car manufacturers that you value the environment most when buying a car."  And it is true, buying a Prius says that even though you need a car, you're at least buying one that is environmentally friendlier, and you are prioritizing the environmental impact over price, power, and size.  This flies in the face of the American trend of buying bigger and bigger SUVs, and it creates a new consumer storyline.  This storyline says the environment is important to me, even if I have to pay more for it.

And buying organic continues that storyline.  There are lots of health and environmental reasons for buying organic, but most of all you are reinforcing this environmental-consumer storyline.  When you buy organic, you tell producers that you are using your purchasing power to speak out against the use of pesticides, the use of hormones, the destruction of biodiversity, the advent of corporate farming.  You are telling a story and corporate food is the audience.  (And it's a storytelling that's working--look at the vast increase in the availability of organic foods even in mainstream grocery stores.)

So there's a tremendous economic advantage to buying organic.  But there is also a tremendous environmental disadvantage to using plastic.  Wesa recently spent a month without buying plastic, and her blog, Life without Plastic, has a ton of great information.  Waste Online also has a great information sheet about recycling plastic that summarizes the environmental impact of plastic:

• 56% of all plastic waste is from packaging
• Only 7% of plastic waste is currently recycled
• "Plastics production requires significant quantities of resources, primarily fossil fuels, both as a raw material and to deliver energy for the manufacturing process. It is estimated that 4% of the world's annual oil production is used as a feedstock for plastics production and an additional 3-4% during manufacture"
• "In addition, plastics manufacture requires other resources such as land and water and produces waste and emissions"
• "Plastics production also involves the use of potentially harmful chemicals, which are added as stabilisers or colorants."
• "Because most plastics are non-degradable, they take a long time to break down, possibly up to hundreds of years - although no-one knows for certain as plastics haven't existed for long enough - when they are landfilled. With more and more plastics products, particularly plastics packaging, being disposed of soon after their purchase, the landfill space required by plastics waste is a growing concern."

So unrecycled plastic is nasty stuff.  So which matters more?  Reducing use of plastic, or supporting organic food?  Like I said, I have a conundrum.

* Speaking of eating natural/organic, anything Alexia is highly recommended.  Oh my goodness.  They could just back a truck up to my house, seriously.
** Is this even true?  I've always been taught that buying in bulk saves packaging, but don't two 8oz bottles and one 16oz bottle use the same amount of plastic?  I guess you have the issue of the lid which is less widely recyclable, but still.  I'm not sure on this.