Marks and Spencers - Be Ashamed - Outrageous over packaging

mark55man

My OH very kindly put a box of Marks and Spencers chocolate buttons in my christmas stocking. Inside the cardboard box, each button (about an inch in diameter) is individually plastic wrapped.

I've seen some over packaging in my time, but that really took the biscuit. Blimey I thought the big multinationals were getting better at this sort of thing!!

System

i had 2 electric toothbrushes delivered in a huge box at least 3 times the size of the contents.
its time legislation was brought in that forced manufacturer's to have packaging no more than 10% bigger than the contents

The_Green_Hornet

Most packaging can be recycled these days so it isn't a major problem, is it?

merlot123

Lakeland are quite bad for this too, using oversize boxes etc, but it all goes into the recycle bin, so no problem.

As for the legislation - I think the government could use its time in the house more effectively than discussing oversized packaging.

mark55man

Most packaging is recyclable, although these little bags weren't. Its just recycling isn't a no loss thing, and its also misleading - not for toothbrushes but for consumables - it seemed a cheap and lazy way of giving less, with th environment taking the hit

System

merlot123 wrote: »

Lakeland are quite bad for this too, using oversize boxes etc, but it all goes into the recycle bin, so no problem.

As for the legislation - I think the government could use its time in the house more effectively than discussing oversized packaging.

ooh someones got their knickers in a twist !

Ben84

The_Green_Hornet wrote: »

Most packaging can be recycled these days so it isn't a major problem, is it?

Unfortunately, recycling doesn't much negate the effects of using things as the resource costs and pollution don't all happen when something is thrown out, in fact for most items the huge majority occur when the raw materials are extracted and when the item is made. Disposal is usually the least impacting stage - although it does represent the embodied energy and resources that went in to its current form being lost. Problem is, these aren't recovered by recycling. However, some of the energy and resources that went in to extracting the raw materials can potentially be recovered through recycling, for example it takes less energy to melt aluminium than make new and less water to recycle paper than make new, but domestic recycling is an energy and resource consuming process itself and the net environmental impact can be positive or negative in different situations. It doesn't always help and has a number of controversies.

Anyway, I think it more important to consider the value, both to you and the environment of an item before buying it rather than later. Do you need it at all, is it useful or perhaps can something else you already have do the same thing or maybe the item borrowed as it's rarely needed? Will it last or will it need replacing often? Can it likely be repaired if broken? Does it have secondary uses?

Mids_Costcutter

I have taken up the issue of overpackaging with some online retailers in recent years, when for example a small calendar was sent in a fair sized cardboard box with lots of plastic bubble wrap: it could easily have been dispatched in an envelope. The response was: we can't track it if it's an envelope, but is that really the case? Surely a courier company can track anything they send regardless of size?

I think the point Ben84 is making is that it's far better to reduce the amount of packaging used in the first place rather than recycle?

Ben84

Mids_Costcutter wrote: »

I think the point Ben84 is making is that it's far better to reduce the amount of packaging used in the first place rather than recycle?

Yes, that and pointing out it's the items inside the packaging that tend to cost the most, both for the environment and financially.

Quite how we've got to this hight of consumerism and most people's worries are focused on the boxes we put all this stuff in is initially difficult to rationalise. However industry and the government don't want to confront the major problem, the increasingly shorter and shorter life span of consumer goods, so green issues are getting distorted in to packaging and household recycling.

As one of many examples, telephone companies have received a lot of positive press for reducing mobile phone packaging and introducing chargers with less standby energy use, but they too are an industry that heavily encourages, if not from some personal experience pretty much force customers to 'upgrade' their handset every year. However, I expect that one over packaged and not very energy efficient mobile and charger that is kept for five years will be better than five low packaging low energy mobiles.

mark55man

Ben

That's very interesting - its like a diversionary tactic to focus on the packaging when most of the stuff (I will agree that chocolate buttons fall into this category) simply shouldn't be bought in the fisrt place

Thanks

Ben84

mark88man wrote: »

Ben

That's very interesting - its like a diversionary tactic to focus on the packaging when most of the stuff (I will agree that chocolate buttons fall into this category) simply shouldn't be bought in the fisrt place

Thanks

Well, I don't know that chocolate buttons shouldn't be made, as they are fun to people to eat

However, I think it much more important to consider the issue of just how much products people consume and why, rather than worry mainly about how we package and transport these items.

Packaging does of course have its valuable place in all this as somewhere to save resources, but it's a small part of the bigger picture here. The items are the big resource consumers in all this, but our economy depends on us consuming lots of stuff and we have been greatly encouraged by advertising and consumer culture to believe that consuming more and more stuff is good for us as individuals. Reality is however, it depends. If someone who does not have clothes buys clothes, it is good for them as they are now more comfortable and protected from the weather, but if someone who has enough clothes buys more it is bad for them as they have less money and less space in their house.

We also need to consider that items are not made for people, we departed that reality a long time ago when people started to make items to trade and have in the past 20-30 years greatly departed it. Items are now made for retailers and manufacturers. For example, many modern electric kettles break after 1-2 years I find, sending people back to the shop to buy another. Before, in the 1970s and 80s kettles used to last a long time, many of these are still working today. I believe they're not made so people can boil water, they're made because people want to boil water and companies can make money out of it. We hear a lot about consumer wants and needs, as if it's what all of this is about, but these have increasingly become a resource to exploit. People go to work for money to spend on these wants and needs, but increasingly their efforts vanish as the items just don't last and/or consumer culture discovers more stuff we must apparently have. In a more sustainable situation we would make items to meet people's wants and needs with the least material input (basically, they need to be lasting/reusable), but that doesn't work in a situation where items are made for retailers and manufacturers. We must keep returning for more, both to spend money and to keep us going to work.

A lot of the time I feel we're ignoring major failings of our excessive progress in to a consumer culture. As individuals we need to be more interested in considering if we really need items and if they're good ones which will last. I'm concerned that we're being encouraged to question the alleged greeness of items rather than the need for items, as well as there being little focus or information provided on the major impact of an item, which is it's typical useful life.