Your coffee cup needs a climate rating, too

Here is a quick game for the climate-conscious. Try ranking these disposable beverage containers from least to most environmentally friendly: aluminium, glass, paperboard, plastic bottle, plastic pouch.

Unless you’re an expert in the subject, it is likely that your answers are a long way from reality. That is a problem. Packaging is a US$1 trillion (S$1.36 trillion) market that generates hundreds of millions of tonnes of waste every year – but our ideas about it are often based more on hunches than solid information. As the world’s production of packaging waste rises to developed-country levels of about 200kg per person, governments are going to have to play a bigger role in helping people make sense of this mess.