That container of yogurt I ate for breakfast, the cardboard box that held the books I just ordered, and the bags I used to buy my produce today all ended up in the garbage. It’s all waste, and we know it’s not good; such careless consumption clogs landfills, raises packaging costs, and uses up valuable resources and energy. But how do we cut the junk?
That’s a Load of Garbage
According to the City of San Diego’s Environmental Services Department, we throw away only approximately one-third of the garbage we generate immediately after we make purchases. There’s more waste we don’t even see, because that one-third accounts for only the primary packaging, when there are really three kinds:
1. Primary packaging is what we handle as consumers.
2. Secondary packaging is the term used for the larger cases or boxes that group quantities of primary packaged goods for distribution.
3. Transit packaging refers to the wooden boards, plastic wrapping, and containers that load, transport, and unload these goods.
So for, say, one container of yogurt, there’s a lot of hidden junk.
Consumption with a Conscience
The first step in reducing packaging waste is not to bring it home with you. Thanks to sites like Treehugger, Care2, and Green Options (to name just a few), companies and consumers with the common aim of ditching the debris are finding each other and doing good things.
The United Kingdom especially is setting the trend here. Unpackaged, a store in London, encourages customers to bring their own containers or purchase reusable containers for a discount. And the Co-operative Group, a democratic business model in the UK that offers comprehensive services to its four million members, reduced more than forty thousand tons of waste in 2007.
Here in the United States, our corporations are doing their part, too. Amazon launched its Certified Frustration-Free Packaging program in November 2008 to save shoppers the hassle of dealing with blister packs, bubble wrap, and unnecessary boxes. The reduced carbon footprint is really more a happy side effect of this initiative, but I’ll take it. Reviews on Treehugger and The Consumerist pan Amazon’s claims that it offers better packaging, however, so this idea might sound more appealing than its reality.
Where companies drop the ball, some governments are taking action. The Netherlands, for example, instituted a Waste Fund in 2007, which it financed with a carbon tax on packaging. The fund helps to pay for the separate collection of household packaging waste, while the tax encourages businesses to reduce their waste and consumers to recycle more. Throughout Europe, the Green Dot program, part of the European Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive, requires companies to report the amount of packaging waste they generate and either recover it from the European market or pay a license fee to join a nonprofit program, like the Green Dot scheme, that contributes to recovery and recycling. More than two dozen European countries currently participate in this program.
