DIY powdered coconut sugar + Plastic in the Environment

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What does powdered sugar have to do with plastic in the environment?

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Most powdered sugar comes in plastic packaging, with or without a zippered enclosure. Some bags are thin and flimsy (left) while some are a little sturdier (right). However, neither can be recycled in most curbside bins. In fact, many retailers and companies label this type of packaging with the implication that it can be recycled, but they are lying! 

Rich Carey / Shutterstock

In addition, the lightweight nature of plastic packaging such as these makes it very easy to be carried via wind into streets, rivers, and the ocean (Bullard et al., 2021). So, even if you were to properly dispose of your package in a trashcan, it might not make it to the dump. Further, if it does make it to the dump, it will take around 450 years to break into smaller pieces. However, it never actually fully degrades! This causes a multitude of problems for wildlife, both on land and in the ocean, from camels to marine invertebrates (Eriksen et al, 2021; Lusher 2015).

So, what can you do? 

Seek out products that are not packaged in plastic. When you can't find them, buy it in bulk to minimize the plastic packaging used, either from a bulk retailer (bring your own container!), or online. Seriously, you should see my pantry - I have 25 and 50lb bags of way too many baking items because I can't find them sustainably packaged. It's a little ridiculously, but a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do if she wants to bake treats AND save the seas.




Which brings us to this simple little powdered sugar recipe. You can take any kind of sugar and turn it into powdered sugar (cane, coconut, maple, etc.). All you need is a high powered blender! I use my Vitamix and the dry grain container.

How to:
  • For every 1 cup of sugar, add 1 TBSP corn starch
  • Blend together until powdered
  • Stop every 30 seconds, remove the container from the stand, and stir it around with a knife to make sure all the grains have a chance to be pulverized.
References: 

Joanna E. Bullard, Annie Ockelford, Patrick O'Brien, Cheryl McKenna Neuman (2021). Preferential transport of microplastics by wind. In Atmospheric Environment, Vol 245: 118038.

Lusher, A. (2015). Microplastics in the marine environment: distribution, interactions and effects. In Marine anthropogenic litter (pp. 245-307). Springer, Cham.

Marcus Eriksen, Amy Lusher, Mia Nixon, Ulrich Wernery (2021). The plight of camels eating plastic waste. In Journal of Arid Environments, Vol 185: 104374.

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