Packaging

LambshankRedemption

Sorry if this has been discussed before, but is there anything we can do as a community about packaging?

I live alone and the amount I alone generate is shocking. I recycle as much as I can but looking at what goes into my greenbin is frankly annoying.

I bought a bottle of Tabasco sauce the other day. Why does it need to come in a small carboard box? I understand there is food safety and hygiene reasons for lots of things. but a small bottle does not need to come in a cardboard box. You would think the producers would be happy to cut down on how much packaging they hav to buy, print and pack their product in.

Thoughts anyone?

kirk.

Amazon is flooding the developed world with plastic junk people don't need

So much supermarket veg still in plastic bags

Shelfs stacked with plastic milk cartons every day

Shop fridges full of plastic drink bottles that nobody needs

Probably need something doing at EU level to outlaw most of this crap

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120979116#Comment_120979116

I am sick to the teeth with unnecessary packaging, as was my late mother DECADES before, even giving out stink to a friend, Exec of Meats in a big supermarket chain, in the 1970s, re wasteful packaging, he good humouredly laughed her off, no friendship lost but packaging was a major hobby horse.

kirk.

Supermarkets couldn't care less without regulation or public opinion

Local SuperValu is packaging more meat for display at the refrigerators rather than the meat counter .

There just isn't enough regulation to reduce unnecessary packaging

I’ d just disposed of the packaging of a mobility scooter in my own apartment block section. I have ?”very little energy for doing this kind of thing, but I tied dozens of sheets of folded cardboard together with string for disposal in the basement as reasonably requested by maintenance company. I’m the only one who bothers not to throws big unfolded boxes in a tower. I know the certain cultists, they are tenants, not owners.

kirk.

It's madness people going to a supermarket and filling a trolley full of packaging cans and bottles

Someday we'll look back at it and say wtf!

In the meantime Amazon has come along and couriers are driving round delivering plastic in boxes to people

A week or two ago a friend from Churchtown and myself were taking about our childhoods and how “rag and bone” and “”scraps collectors@ would ply the roads of Dublin 6 & Dublin -4, our areas. The Cosgraves operated at first a basic pig farm around Rathfarnham, opened butcher shops, gained a reputation for produce, went bigger time, sent their children to private school, those children became business people, and developers.

Essentially recycling was initially a big factor in turnover.

Re “anything we can do” I once ent on a brief campaign to try and change eg Dunnes Stores via Twitter, X, what you want to call it now, they responded briefly my ficus went elsewhere.

sprucemoose

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058309337/packaging

you cant stack them on top of each other if theyre not in the boxes

i dont agree with it, but thats part of the reasoning

Strumms

Probably to keep the bottles free from damage during transport…

the amount of manual handling involved from production through to transport, on off trucks,, to a warehouse or store where it might sit for days or weeks, to the shelves to the checkout to home….

the boxes can be easily stacked, bottles the complete opposite…. If you don’t box the bottles you need to invest in more dunnage for transport, dunnage itself is bad for the environment, takes up space and you might need an extra vehicle….time consuming too…product needs to be in pristine condition or people won’t buy it.

Capt'n Midnight

Packaging is vital to protect delicate goods and food and before containerisation up to a third of Scottish Whisky shipments 'evaporated' during transport to the USA.

But excess packaging is marketing and exists to distort the theoretical free market of fully informed consumers.

con747

Easy solution, If you don't buy it they won't sell it.

antoinolachtnai

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120979412#Comment_120979412

The bottle is really the impactful part of the packaging, not the cardboard. The cardboard is only there to protect the expensive glass packaging against breakage in the packing carton.

Companies pay a levy per tonne for the packaging they put on the market.

They would get rid of packaging if they could but nobody wants to buy Tabasco sauce in sachets or by the litre.

timmyntc

Cardboard is far less of an issue than plastic packaged fruit and veg. Single use plastics are rife for portioning of veg in particular.

And its these plastics that go straight to landfill and sit forever.

Cardboard is a non issue

magicbastarder

if the OP is talking about mcilhenny's tabasco, and i think s/he is, that box is not there to protect the bottle. a bottle that size would be far less prone to breakage than 'normal' sized bottles, and i suspect the box is there precisely because the bottle is so small - to counter the lowered visual effect of a correspondingly small label.

the bottle is 57ml, i.e. about 18% the volume of a standard soft drinks can. in this instance, it's not the cardboard i'd be too fussed about; it's the glass. the smaller the bottle, the greater the relative weight of the packaging becomes, and that's going to be an eyewatering ratio of glass to product i suspect.

mcilhenny's also sell in 350ml bottles FWIW but clearly the OP's shop doesn't stock those.

and on the flipside, it's not very much glass at all for a product which could last months. compare the difference to say buying four bottles of beer and drinking them in an evening, for them to go into the bottle bank the next morning.

Plastic covering on fruit annoys me the most. Like OP I live alone and I’m hard pushed to get individual fruit and veg as per my needs, especially in Aldi & Lidl where everything comes in multipacks.

Meat used to more commonly be sold in packages that was overly deep, eg in case of steaks. You don’t see quite as much of that now, but I’ve spotted it here and there. Takes up more unnecessary space in the freezer too.

I gave up on trying to “influence” supermarkets, having taken plenty of pics of examples I was unhappy with & tweeting them to their vendors, & relevant entities. Got lip service only.

kirk.

Tall fridges full of drinks bottles annoys me the most , people can manage just fine without buying them

Anyway it's not something you hear much about on the daily news so I presume there's inaction on the issue

Isn't the paper milk cartons more EF than the plastic so why are they still selling plastic?

One of a million possible questions

magicbastarder

are't those paper cartons lined with plastic? with a different plastic for the spout etc.?