There’s nothing wrong with reasonable packaging; we all want the stuff we buy to be clean and undamaged. But retail packaging has a dual purpose — protecting a product, and getting you to buy it. The latter case is where things get out of hand.
How many times has this happened to you… You order a small light weight item online and would reasonably expect to receive the item wrapped up in some packaging, but what you actually receive is the item you ordered wrapped up in more “protective marketing material” than the can possibly be needed.
A site that has some great examples of this can be found at Overpackaging.com, while more on this story can be read at LighterFootsteps.com
1 response so far ↓
1 D.D.Grant // May 17, 2007 at 9:59 pm
I think it’s good that you raise this issue which has tended to slip into the shadows in face of the more high profile global warming topics. I am also daily amazed by the junkmail I move directly to the recycling. The irony is that some of it is appeals to save the environment from government.
And the silence has good reason. As a result of my economic studies I am almost certain that there is a systemic barrier in the capitalist form of production that means it is not possible to avoid destroying the planet under this organization of production.
The reason is relatively easy to grasp. In the course of the development of productivity the output of each new generation of technology increases geometrically even as the labour power per machine decreases in the same way. The consequence is that an increasing portion of the value of the product consists of the value of the raw material inputs. This is one of the reasons driving the enormous increase in the exploitation of natural resources. The beast must be fed and each new accumulation of capital only serves to exacerbate the situation.
The packaging issue is one aspect of this.
DDG
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