All our packaging: how to reduce it substantially?

Deleted User wrote: »

So, leaving aside the obvious food waste, I'm fairly floored by the amount of cardboard, paper and plastic I've been putting in the recycling bins today. And I'm certain many people are feeling similarly about all their own waste (just had a big chat with the next door neighbour, who brought the topic of waste up).

I'm a strong believer in the Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility: for each additional unit (e.g. a toy car) of a product consumed a person's satisfaction declines. In other words, a kid isn't, for instance, getting anything like the same sort of satisfaction from cars 5, 10, or 15 as he is from car 1. In a nutshell, we all could do with far fewer presents, with far less paper and cardboard and all the rest and our satisfaction would probably not decline much, if at all. I've always been very conscientious about recycling, ever since I lived and worked in Scandinavia in the 1990s, an experience which was a huge eyeopener in how we as a society could be much more intelligent about our waste.

Anyway, while for cultural reasons to do with "expectations" I may not win the debate even in my own home about buying fewer presents next year, how can I reduce the impact of all this consumerism on our planet? I sense that there is a huge revolution needed in our packaging culture and it will have to be done at an EU-wide level at least. There's no way it could succeed on a voluntary basis because the fancy packaging will have the marketing edge and thus undermine attempts by companies to act more environmentally in their packaging. However, I cannot envisage all the extraordinary packaging of products today continuing indefinitely. I still remember when two of the local pubs used to sell sweets - bon, bons, Cola Cubes, etc - out of big jars, so anybody who thinks the current level of packaging has always been with us is very mistaken.

There is definitely a massive cultural change needed in terms of the "I have to buy a present for..." mentality. Can we not start a campaign to make it acceptable to give presents with far less packaging? Governments are giving tax breaks to businesses all the time, why not tax breaks to reduce waste? (Or else just change the law and compel them to be more ethical) It could be a superb business opportunity to facilitate a consumerism with far less plastic/cardboard/paper etc.

In the meantime, though, what is the next level up from conventionally recycling almost everything? Even our quotidian milk back in the 80s was in glass milk bottles - remember this? - which we washed and put back out for the milkman - not it's just plastic container after plastic container, every single day in the vast majority of homes. There are so many products like that now that really are no credit to our society but it seems to be the "lower cost" option to create more waste, when most of us would agree that we should inventivise a more efficient, less wasteful use of resources.

Marley and Marley wrote: »

Correct.

Every single problem the world faces regarding waste of resources stems from there being far too many people on the planet.

If the worlds population had stayed where it was in 1900 everything would be fine.

Of all the things you can do to help the environment not having children is by far the best, nothing else comes close to it.

Deleted User wrote: »

So, leaving aside the obvious food waste, I'm fairly floored by the amount of cardboard, paper and plastic I've been putting in the recycling bins today. And I'm certain many people are feeling similarly about all their own waste (just had a big chat with the next door neighbour, who brought the topic of waste up).

I'm a strong believer in the Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility: for each additional unit (e.g. a toy car) of a product consumed a person's satisfaction declines. In other words, a kid isn't, for instance, getting anything like the same sort of satisfaction from cars 5, 10, or 15 as he is from car 1. In a nutshell, we all could do with far fewer presents, with far less paper and cardboard and all the rest and our satisfaction would probably not decline much, if at all. I've always been very conscientious about recycling, ever since I lived and worked in Scandinavia in the 1990s, an experience which was a huge eyeopener in how we as a society could be much more intelligent about our waste.

Anyway, while for cultural reasons to do with "expectations" I may not win the debate even in my own home about buying fewer presents next year, how can I reduce the impact of all this consumerism on our planet? I sense that there is a huge revolution needed in our packaging culture and it will have to be done at an EU-wide level at least. There's no way it could succeed on a voluntary basis because the fancy packaging will have the marketing edge and thus undermine attempts by companies to act more environmentally in their packaging. However, I cannot envisage all the extraordinary packaging of products today continuing indefinitely. I still remember when two of the local pubs used to sell sweets - bon, bons, Cola Cubes, etc - out of big jars, so anybody who thinks the current level of packaging has always been with us is very mistaken.

There is definitely a massive cultural change needed in terms of the "I have to buy a present for..." mentality. Can we not start a campaign to make it acceptable to give presents with far less packaging? Governments are giving tax breaks to businesses all the time, why not tax breaks to reduce waste? (Or else just change the law and compel them to be more ethical) It could be a superb business opportunity to facilitate a consumerism with far less plastic/cardboard/paper etc.

In the meantime, though, what is the next level up from conventionally recycling almost everything? Even our quotidian milk back in the 80s was in glass milk bottles - remember this? - which we washed and put back out for the milkman - not it's just plastic container after plastic container, every single day in the vast majority of homes. There are so many products like that now that really are no credit to our society but it seems to be the "lower cost" option to create more waste, when most of us would agree that we should inventivise a more efficient, less wasteful use of resources.

Andrewf20 wrote: »

People these days loves convenience more than ever, due in part to the fact we seem to be more busy. The hassle of bringing bananas over to be weighted and then to print a sticker is often trumped by just grabbing a bag of them with a bar code on it.

The packaging thing has started to get to me also. Such a waste. I'm making an effort to buy loose veg now.

Kids are getting so many toys now at Xmas etc that they hardly appreciate half of them.