Pass the parcel
Ben/P5060021/flickr
I feel myself getting hotter, my face goes red, I’m starting to sweat. I stab furiously at the offending item. My fingers fumble as I try to grasp it, then I drop it. I stoop to pick it up, then curse as a jagged corner catches my thumb – blood everywhere. Operations are suspended while I run to the bathroom to find a plaster.
The wound staunched, I return grimly to the fray. Finally, after another ten minutes of constant twisting, tearing, pulling and stabbing with the scissors, an evil grin of triumph spreads across my face. I’ve done it. I’ve successfully opened the apparently impenetrable. I can finally hold in my hands the new pack of brushes for the electric toothbrush.
Now that account is really not that far removed from the actual experience. I seem to remember a moment in time not that long ago when we were all much more aware of the excess of packaging in our daily lives, and confronted with data suggesting that around 10 million tonnes of packaging are produced in the UK every year, various campaigns were initiated to reduce this. There was talk of charging for carrier bags, and the supermarket chains brought out personalised ranges of canvas and cloth bags that would replace for good the ubiquitous plastic bag. Supermarkets were to be prosecuted if Trading Standards officers found they were using excessive packaging. There were proposals to reintroduce deposits for beer and soft drink bottles, something which used to be popular in the UK and is still common practice in many poorer countries.
For those more disposed towards direct action, there was the option to purchase products at the supermarket, and then having paid for them, to stand at the checkout and carefully unwrap each item, leaving a pile of packaging behind and cheerfully announcing to the bemused staff that you can manage perfectly well without it thank you very much. It is interesting to note that this tactic was wholeheartedly approved by the Women’s Institute – hardly a bastion of revolutionary activity.
Another activity which received significant media coverage was the sailing in 2010 of the Plastiki, a boat made from plastic bottles and recycled waste products, from San Francisco across the Pacific Ocean to Sydney. The journey took four months, and the boat travelled through a number of fragile and ecologically challenged regions. The focus was more on the problems generated by waste, but it goes without saying that excess packaging creates just that.
I did a quick internet search on the problems of excess packaging, and the results confirmed what I’d feared; the whole issue seems to have been relegated to the back burner. There are relatively few current articles in the media on the problem, although one can of course find inspiring stories of individual companies innovating new ways of recycling and reducing waste. The exponential growth of online shopping in recent years has not helped at all; the amount of packaging required to safely deliver a fragile item can frequently weigh more and be greater in volume than the object itself. One final estimate for me really brings it home: according to a report published by Stanford University, people in the USA discard their own weight in packaging every 30-40 days, and I’m sure here in the UK we’re not far behind.
So I beaver away, refilling my laundry liquid bottles at the local health food store, recycling everything I can lay my hands on, and still find myself repeating time after time at the checkout: ‘No, really, it’s fine thank you, I have my own bags’.