[Mika @ Lund] Eco living from Sweden - August 2020

Hi, this is Mika.

It's August, and finally it seems like the summer days have come.

July was so cool that I thought maybe summer won't come this year, but yay, it's finally here.

Half a year has passed since I started writing this blog about Eco living in Sweden. During these time, I began to look at various things carefully and found many new discoveries.

I would like to focus on packaging today.

Speaking of summer, summer is ice cream! Hot day, eating an ice cream... delicious!

The other day I found an ice cream in paper packaging. Ice cream sold in cups often use paper, so it might not be surprising, but I've never seen ice candy's using paper packaging!

The bag looks a bit more brittle than plastic, but it's functionally is perfectly fine! I've only found two types so far, but I think it will soon be adopted for other ice creams too!!

Next are herbs.

Herbs are sold here in small pots. Some small ones are individually wrapped, but most are potted.

So if you give water like a normal plant, you can create more herbs as long as there are leaves. I like gardening, so if the small pots get a bit too small, I move them to larger pots.

Herbs used to be sold in small plastic bowls with a plastic cover, but recently the cover has changed to paper and the plastic bowl is gone! I am very happy to see this new packaging that does not use plastic at all.

(Left : old package, Right: new package)

The last packaging I want to talk about is a pack of milk and yogurt. Yogurt is also sold here in milk packs.

I like eating Fil, which is a traditional fermented milk product from Sweden which is similar to yogurt. I've noticed that the packaging of the Fil that I like has changed recently too. I used to love paper packages without any plastic parts, but since the package is paper, the expiration date is was very, very short. I still liked it and bought it, but the package changed the other day.

When I first saw the new package, I was disappointed. It was using a cap that looked like plastic.

Most milk packs here come with a plastic cap. I don't see many people who use a paper only pack like Japan. I guess you need a cap to keep the product last longer, but I think it's better not to do that.

I was disappointed, but I eat it every day, so I bought it and after returning home, I read that the cap part I thought was made by plastic was actually made from sugar cane!

This new packaging also made the product more durable, and it seems that the shelf life is longer which means that food loss will be reduced.

I was disappointed at first but quickly got impressed!