Last night when I was watching TV I saw the ad for a washing detergent and they where saying that now is more concentrated so the package is smaller but you can do the same amount of laundry with it. After seeing that commercial i was thinking if more products would do that then we could save a lot for the environment.
Let me list what i thought:
- Less space on a truck so less gas used
- Less space on a truck also means less bad pollution in the air for this one product
- Less space on a truck means more space for other products meaning less trucks on the road
- Less space in the store so we could make smaller stores meaning less electric, lighting, land and so on
- Smaller products also means less packaging and that means less garbage in the landfill
- At home a smaller product needs less space to so the same rules as the store apply here
I guess there are a lot more things that would be less if more products would be smaller. But luckily there are already a lot of options for us to buy stuff that have less packaging. Think for instance of IKEA that wants you to build your own furniture and that means that it is packed small and that makes them and us and the environment better.
But there are also examples how not to do it. For instance I got myself a Mac Book Pro last year and that one came in a nice cardboard box with noting on it and that made me feel good.
BUT then when i came home and unpacked the box I was not very happy because in the nice brown cardboard box there was a new box nice and glossy with a picture of the computer on it. First of all why two boxes? and then why does the printing on that other box be so bad for recycling of it?
I guess we can all try to do our best to buy products that use less packaging and lets hope that the manufacturers do some thinking so it can save them money and it will definitely be better for our planet!
February 22nd, 2008 at 7:34 am
I work in a place where we need to order many items from big companies like Fisher and Sigma. Sometimes we place and order for 4-5 items from the same company. They often ship each item (small bottle) in separate packages, and to make it worse, each package (containing even the smallest item) is in a large box, with tonnes of styrofoam and paper filling. What a waste! I wish every department had a box in which we could put these styrofoam fillings and recycle them. At present I am pretty sure they go to the landfills. The alternative would be to instead use, water soluble corn starch filling chips, that can be thrown in the sink and washed away. Just a thought, have a nice day!