The problem of packaging

This week I received a copy of my favourite magazine in the post. It came with a free gift. It also came with an inordinate amount of unnecessary packaging.

First there was the folder:

Inside the folder was a box:

Inside the box was……

A travel size mascara!

Seriously?!?! It’s not even like it was fragile.

Did it make me want to go out and buy a Chanel mascara? No, it made me appalled that so many resources were wasted to promote a product. A free mascara stuck to the front of the magazine would have been fine, even the box would have been tolerable, but the giant folder? All in high gloss card that is hard to recycle.

Many companies still haven’t learnt to keep their packaging to a minimum to save resources. Even cloth nappy companies can be guilty – one of my suppliers sends their nappies individually wrapped in plastic packaging, inside a plastic bag, inside a cardboard box!

As a consumer, you can influence how a company packages it’s products. Vote with your purse and choose products that are packaged more responsibly. Buy refills where possible (this is a great way to get household products cheaper to – check out these Eco2life refills ). And if you want to be really radical – post unwanted packaging back to the company who produced it, with a letter explaining why 😉