One Family, One Month, 50kg Of Packaging. Why? – The Observer Magazine Investigates.
by Leonora Oppenheim, London, UK on 02. 3.06
Did you know that 14.4g of oil are used to make a Heinz ketchup 'stay clean cap' as opposed to 3.8g for a normal lid? Well Lucy Siegle of the Observer newspaper didn’t either until she started investigating the packaging industry. She realised things had really got out of hand on the over packaging front when she was confronted with the absurdity of a shrink wrapped coconut. Of all foods needing packaging the coconut is clearly not one of them! As she wrote in her brilliant article last Sunday ‘they represent a peerless example of mother nature's ability to provide a delicious foodstuff in a robust, appropriate, convenient and ultimately biodegradable container (ie the husk).’ The coconut episode resulted in an experiment with four families to see how much packaging they went through in a month. Needless to say the results were pretty staggering, as well as very informative about the packaging industry itself.
When Lucy Siegle asked the supermarket chain Morrisons why they felt it necessary to shrinkwrap coconuts she was met with a list of reasons which when translated basically means ‘the customer demands it’. This is not an uncommon response to consumer complaints as it cleverly turns the blame straight back to the complainer. But do we really demand so much packaging? This is what Lucy Siegle wanted to find out with her experiment. She observed that most of the families were surprised by the quantities they had consumed in one month. ‘”It does look like a hell of a lot when you put it all together,” says Eva, surveying the damage that has accumulated in the family's living room.’
Siegle also found that while the families were trying to recycle they often found the process confusing, for example which plastics can be recycled and which can’t. Another mother Hilary says: '”I would normally recycle a lot of it, including yogurt pots and food trays although I've just looked in the recycling leaflet and found out they are excluded, so I've been contaminating my recycling.”' Siegle goes on to explain why it is eco-design that could have the biggest positive influence on the packaging industry:
‘Looking at the many forms of plastic, cardboard, cans and composites spewed over the living room of one of our test families, it's not hard to spot examples of excessive packaging, brain-dead design or both. The eco designers will need all their innovative powers and cunning to reverse industry apathy and denial, and to save us from drowning in a sea of our consumerist excesses. It's not exactly reinventing the wheel, but it's about time we unwrapped it.’
Read the whole article by Lucy Siegle in last Sunday’s Observer Magazine.
This is a major issue in the USA. I lived in Germany for 2 years in various places, and an apartment with four guys all cooking our own meals, and eating in 90% of the time and we went through a small trash can, not much bigger than an office waste basket, a week. Now, living in California, probably one of the better states in the USA when it comes to recycling and such (my municipality provides a seperate can for recyclables and another for yard waste), and we go though a large kitched trash can a couple of times a week for my wife, baby, and I (not including the diapers). All of this, and I rarely eat breakfast or lunch at home during the week.
the link to the article is fscked up.
Thanks ilia, I fixed the link.
The link does not work... can someone please post a link to the story? thx.
Both links work for me, but here it is again in case that makes a difference:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,,1696638,00.html
I find it interesting that a lot of the time eating healthier (or at least, what I assume is healthier) - and cheaper - often also means less packaging.
I live in a sharehouse, and for a while a few of us would drive down to the supermarket, buy a whole heap of processed - and heavily packaged - junk, and bring it home in plastic bags. Result: expensive, not terribly healthy, a heap of waste.
Now a lot of the time my friend and I cycle down to the local fruit & veg markets on the weekend, buy a box full of produce and a few bags full of legumes, cereals, rice and spices from one of the small shops where you can buy them by the kilo rather than in pre-packaged form. Once we get home we put the cereals and things into airtight jars, and re-use the plastic bags next time. Result: very cheap (less than AUS$40 to feed a house of four - three guys and a very hungry lass - plus visitors, for a week), healthier, hardly any waste.
I am continually delighted by the tidy confluence between healthier, cheaper, and more environmentally friendly choices.
I can vouch for this: I worked at an indepedent retail shop here in the US last year and threw a hissy fit when we received a shipment of PLASTIC tote bags, each individually wrapped in PLASTIC shipping bags, then packed 12 to another PLASTIC shipping bag, then packed 8 to a cardboard box. I nearly had a heartattack I was so mad. Companies need to severely cutback on what they think is "necessary" since most of the time, it isn't.
It's also a major issue throughout Britain. In 2001 over 22 million plastic bottles were thrown away each day in the UK alone. Only 1 in 25 was recycled (880,000) meaning over 21 million plastic bottles ended up in our landfill, on dumps or on the streets. This is very scary considering the size of the British Isles, and that the amount of plastic discarded today has dramatically increased since 2001. The traditional use of incineration is no longer a viable option for disposing of such huge quantities of plastics. They are unfriendly to our environment (harmful CO2 emissions) and incur problems when the plastic melts it blocks certain parts of the incinerator.
The independent recycle companies that once a week pick up your recycled items from outside your home will only take certain coded plastics, these plastics have a market value, the others which contain the most poisonous gases lay in landfill for 25 years!