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What Happened To Less Packaging?
By GreenCompany | August 14, 2011
I very well could be dating myself with this article but I cannot help but remember during the late 80′s and early 90′s there was a push on in North America to reduce the amount of material that was being used in packaging. This was coupled with the first residential recycling programs and initially it seemed consumers and manufacturers were both on board with reducing and recycling packaging materials. There was a reduction in the use of plastics and other non-recyclable material (at the time) and it was noticeable in the amount of trash going to the local landfills.
So what happened? Anyone who has purchased non-green advertised items must notice the amount of packaging materials being used on consumer goods these days. Does everything really need to be individually wrapped in a plastic bag? Is there no other material available than styrofoam for packaging – especially where recycling facilities do not exist for such materials?
My wife and I moved recently and she wanted to purchase some new items for the house. After persuading her to buy used where we could, we were left buying many items new from box stores. We were simply amazed at the sheer volume of waste material left over after removing items from their packaging. Cardboard and marked plastics are easy enough for us to recycle where we live because recycling facilities do exist but in many parts of North America recycling facilities are few and far in-between – which means much of that material ends up in the garbage. We even had a laugh at one purchase where each individual screw came in its own plastic bag – 30 of them! Would it have been too hard to put all those into a single bag – and wouldn’t that save the manufacturing company money in the process?
This doesn’t mean that there isn’t much better packaging solutions being put out – because there are. We’ve highlighted some of these new packaging materials including biodegradable chip bags made from plant fibers. But it also seems that some companies have come to believe that just because the bulk of the packaging for their product is recyclable where facilities exist – that they can just pack in more of it. It takes more energy to produce the extra materials even if they are recyclable and on the other end – more energy again to recycle it. Manufacturers should be getting back to the early days of just less packaging period.
How do you feel about this issue? Leave us a comment!
Category: Green Living, Green Shopping
Tags: cardboard, energy, plastic, recycle, recycling, trash 1 Comment »
August 15th, 2011 at 7:15 am
A company I used to work for, the owner worked very hard to reduce packaging, as well as the amount of plastic in their water bottle. In fact their water bottle is the lightest bottle in the industry. He also went to great lengths to be the only company in Canada, that recycles PET back to reusable PET for making new bottles. So recycle your bottle!
If you want to check it out and other environmentally beneficial things they have done you can see it at iceriversprings.com