Inefficient Packaging Awards (No. 1)
This blog post marks the first in what will be a series of posts on examples of absurdly inefficient packaging and how to avoid it. Packaging makes up the largest and fastest growing segment of U.S. municipal solid waste. The uses, and misuses, of packaging are either supported, or not, based on our consumer choices. This series will hopefully help everyone become more observant of wasteful packaging while providing constructive ideas for how to avoid it.
What: Vitamins and supplements. It’s not uncommon to open a bottle of vitamin tablets and find that the tablets take up about a fifth of the space inside the bottle. This is usually a disturbing discovering even for those not typically sensitive to over-packaging. To make matters worse, the bottle is almost never recyclable because most recycling centers reject the opaque plastic commonly used to shield vitamins and supplements from light, which can degrade them.
How to avoid: Ironically, those that purchase vitamins and supplements may be the very people who benefit from them least. Why? People who have the money and inclination to purchase supplements probably already eat of good diet and take care of themselves. Ask your doctor if you really need the vitamins and supplements you are taking.
What: Snack Chips. Snack chip manufacturers have been vacuum-packing their product and disguising the air to food ratio behind opaque packaging for years. The jig is up, but we look the other way because crunchy and salty–and now cheesing, spicy, sour, and sweet–snacks we can eat with our hands are, well, delicious.
How to avoid: Cut back. Snack food, for the most part, is non-nutritious calories laced with sodium and fat, and therefore best avoided on its own merits much less for its over-packaging. When you do buy snacks, check your grocery store’s bulk food section for its selection of snack food, and fill up bags you bring from home.
What: Single Servings. Foods packaged in single serving pouches and containers that are then held together in multiples with more packaging are the poster foods for packaging waste.
How to avoid: Don’t buy them: ever, if you can help it. First avoid buying snacks, beverages and meals from vending machines and convenience stores where singles are your only options. Buy economy sizes of the products you consume–within reason: make sure you need the volume you’re about to buy and can use it up prior to its expiration-if it has one. If you need to send the kids off with single serving portions of anything, pack it up in reusable food storage containers or bottles. If you’re worried that it’s a bigger waste to wash reusable containers than to throw several away–don’t. Throw-away packaging is a bigger problem for the environment than washing out reusable containers.
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