The problem of packaging

Packaging is material used to protect, deliver or present goods. It also provides information about what's inside.  

     There is growing concern amongst any people that too much packaging gets used and that more needs to be done to make packaging more easily recycled or composted.   

That said packaging is sometimes necessary for hygiene and sometimes required by law. Packaging itself can also actually prevent waste!  This sounds odd but it can extend the life of items and thus prevent waste.  For example, an unwrapped cucumber loses moisture and becomes unsaleable within three days.   This leads to millions of the things being binned by supermarkets and farmers every year.  But this can be simply resolved just by adding a mere 1.5 grams of plastic wrapping round a cucumber can which keep it fresh for 14 days and ensure that more get eaten and less gets landfilled overall.

 The Packaging (Essential Requirements) Regulations 1998 were introduced to control packaging.  This requires companies who make packaging to minimise what they use and to pay to help pay for it to be recycled.  It is not common knowledge but most big packaging manufactures pay money for Packaging Recovery Notes each year to comply with these Regulations and that money gets "recycled" into the recycling industry to help subsidize the cost of recycling such material.

      

Alot of people complain that there is too much packaging and that its the fault of the manufacturers, big business, the government, the councils.  However its important to be an informed consumer and think about packaging when you shop and its perfectly sensible to avoid over packaged goods and lobby for more to be done about the quantity and quality of packaging used.  However if you think about it probably the single biggest influence of how much packaging waste you have is YOU!  

You can control what comes into your house, by buying products with less packaging.   After all its not like it jumps off the shelves and into your trolley is it?  And its not like you cant chose to go to your local market and buy fresh food without packaging...  And as a shopper you are very powerful, the supermarkets will only produce what you buy after all.

So next time your shopping and next time you're putting out your recycling, think what can I do, to reduce the amount of packaging?