Juice boxes

The opening of school this year provided Maine school children with a civics lesson. When the lunch bag was opened, the sandwich, cookies and carrot sticks were keeping strange company.

The little plastic, foil and paper juice containers were gone. In their place were glass bottles with screw-off caps, plastic bottles with pull-tab tops and conventional paper-and-foil containers that had to be flapped back to be opened.

The experience was unique to Maine children. This state is the only one in the country to ban the “aseptic” packages on the assumption that they generate multi-material, and therefore non-recyclable trash.

From a societal standpoint, this decision someday will be regarded either as a token gesture of marginal significance or as a misguided policy that will have to be undone.

Although the dumpsters initially will fill up with glass, plastic and other multi-material, non-recyclable packaging, there are thermos bottles or other reusable containers to replace the little pouches more efficiently. But in the long term, the state may realize that it did itself a disservice by banning the aseptic packaging.

Eventually, the liquids destined for the thermos bottles will be marketed in concentrated form in aseptic packing, because it is clean, efficient and environmentally sound: The little multi-material packages will replace the big glass, plastic and paper containers that now crowd grocers’ shelves, and dumpsters.