To get a chocolate out of a box demands a considerable amount
of unpacking: the box has to be taken out of its paper bag the plastic wrapper
has to be tom off, the lid opened and the packing paper inside removed; the
chocolate itself then has to be unwrapped from its own piece of paper. Similarly
a pot of face cream comes surrounded by layers of paper, wedged inside a
cardboard box, and the whole thing wrapped tightly in plastic.
It is not only luxuries which are wrapped in this way. With so many goods
now produced centrally and sold in supermarkets it is becoming increasingly
difficult to buy anything from nails to potatoes that is not already done up in
plastic or paper. The wrapper itself is of no interest to the
shopper, who usually throws it away immediately. Useless wrapping accounts for
much of the 31 pounds in weight of rubbish put out by the average London
household each week. So why is it done Some of it, like the wrapping on meat,
is necessary, but most of the rest is simply competitive selling. This is
stupid. Packaging is using up scarce energy and raw materials and mining our
surroundings. Costs of the raw materials used in packaging are rising all the
time. One big firm reports that its glass, cans and paper have all gone up by 30
per cent in the last couple of months, while plastic has increased by 50 percent
and all these prices are still rising. This seems as yet to have had
surprisingly little effect on the packaging practice of manufacturers.
Little research is being carded out on the costs in energy and materials
of other possible types of packaging. Just how practical is it, for instance,
for local authorities to save waste paper and re-manufacture it as egg-boxes
Would it be cheaper to plant another forest to produce new paper
One reason for the unorganized behaviour of everyone concerned is probably
the varied nature of the packaging industry. So many people, with so many
different interests of their own, are affected that it is extremely hard to
reach any agreement on what should be done. Also, packagers say that preserving
forests and preventing waste is not their concern. People can not reach an agreement on solving the problem of packaging because ______.