GREENING CHEESE


Don't be alarmed. I am not going to describe the chemistry or properties of cheese when it discolors due to improper or prolonged storage. Greening here is an opportunity to use the term in it's new sense, i.e. , helping the environment. We are all being exhorted to do what we can to help keep the planet clean and free of materials that are unnecessarily polluting it.

One such product is the plastic wrap that envelops slices of cheese . Kraft and others must find it financially favorable to give us our cheese slices all neatly wrapped. Did we complain that it was difficult or annoying to separate them when they came stacked together in one wrapper?
So why do we have to fish around for the opening on a piece of plastic? Why do we still run the risk of tearing the slice by peeling off the wrapper? Why do we have to look for the waste basket to dispose of this unnnecessary junk? Why do we have to include it in our trash when we go to the dump or transfer station? Why does it have to be stored and later transferred to an incinerator where it will smolder and send noxious gases out into the atmosphere, or truck it to a disposal site to be covered by God's precious earth in a land fill and allowed to remain unchanged chemically for thousands of years? Why must we use our expensive and dwindling supply of petroleum to manufacture the little wasters.?
If one buys cheese at the Deli counter, it is stacked in one wrapper and it is what it claims to be ..cheese. The individual wrapped brand isn't even cheese...it's "processed cheese" Whatever that is?

There is another product in the same section of the super market that is unnecessarily wrapped in quarters ...butter. But, butter quarters are wrapped in paper. True, but trees must be cut with all the ancillary expenditure of energy. Yes, but trees get there carbon from that which is already available in the atmosphere in increasing and threatening amounts... by photosynthesis. Paper comes from environmentally friendly trees , not like plastic which is a man made conversion of the carbon from oil. We should let that carbon stay buried under the sands of Arabia and elsewhere for as long as humans can do so.

If we must have our processed cheese slices gift-wrapped , let's do it with paper.This writer would not deign to make such a suggestion without first experimenting.

The Experiment:
A quarter section of butter was carefully unwrapped and the paper set aside.
A slice of cheese was carefully unwrapped and the plastic unceremoniously tossed into the waste basket .
The cheese was placed on the paper and enclosed.
The finished product was returned to the refrigerator for 24 hours and then removed for unwrapping.

The Results

The paper wrapper slipped off with ease. There was no tearing of the cheese slice.

The Conclusion:

Paper or Plastic ? Paper ...hands down!