(1) {{U}}To get a chocolate out of a box requires a considerable amount of unpacking: the box has to be taken out of the paper bag in which it arrived;{{/U}} the cellophane wrapper has to be torn off, the lid opened and the paper removed; the chocolate itself then has to be unwrapped from its piece of paper. But this insane amount of wrapping is not confined to luxuries. It is now becoming increasingly difficult to buy anything that is not done up in cellophane, polythene, or paper.
The package itself is of no interest to the shopper, who usually throws it away immediately. (2) {{U}}Useless wrapping accounts for much of the refuse put out by the average London household each week{{/U}}. So why is it done? Some of it, like the cellophane on meat, is necessary, but most of the rest is simply competitive selling. This is absurd. Packaging is using up scarce energy and sources and messing up the environment.
Little research is being carded out on the costs of alternative types of packaging. Just how possible is it, for instance, for local authorities to salvage paper, pulp it, and recycle it as egg-boxes? Would it be cheaper to plant another forest? Paper is the material most used for packaging--20 million paper bags are apparently used in Great Britain each day--but very little is salvaged.
A machine has been developed that pulps paper then processes it into packaging, e.g. egg-boxes and cartons. This could be easily adapted for local authority use. It would mean that people would have to separate their refuse into paper and non-paper, with a different dustbin for each. (3) {{U}}Paper is, in fact, probably the material that can be most easily recycled; and now, with massive increases in paper prices, the time has come at which collection by local authorities could be profitable{{/U}}.
(4) {{U}}It is evident that more research is needed into the recovery and re-use of various materials and into the cost of collecting and recycling containers as opposed to producing new ones{{/U}}. Unnecessary packaging, intended to be used just once, and making things look better so more people will buy them, is clearly becoming increasingly absurd. (5) {{U}}But it is not so much a question of doing away with packaging as using it sensibly{{/U}}. What is needed now is a more sophisticated approach to using scarce resources for what is, after all, a relatively unimportant function.