Article: Buried under the layers

Tuesday October 6, 2009

By TAN CHENG LI

Malaysians are still enamoured with pretty presentations – and that spells trouble for the environment.

THE tiny present wrapped inside a box which is put into a bigger box, and a yet bigger box and so on, may be a good joke for a birthday or Christmas.

In reality, unfortunately, many goods are actually packed like that.

Supermarket shelves brim over with such examples of over-packaging.

Take, for instance, that popular brand of chocolates with the tongue-twister of a name. Each piece is wrapped in foil, sits on a paper cup, which sits on a plastic tray which sits inside a plastic box which is wrapped in shrink wrap. That's five layers of packaging!

And nothing says "excessive packaging" more than the boxes of mooncakes sold recently for the mid-autumn festival.

Loads of waste: A heap of packaging waste, and all for only 12 pieces of pastries. Each piece is encased in a plastic cup, inside a plastic wrapper. Some have an additional paper label.

In the old days, mooncakes came in only two layers of wrapping, a greaseproof paper and a red paper label. These days, the pastries are packed lavishly in layer after layer of packaging.

Sure, the prettily designed box can easily find a new life as storage container but certainly not the plastic trays and wrappings.

Greasy and small-sized, these are unlikely to be tossed into the recycling bin – although they should be. And don't you wonder how much of the price goes towards the fancy wrapping?

Then there are those six-tub packs of yoghurt and jelly, all held together in a plastic tray and then shrink-wrapped. Electronic gadgets are notoriously over-packaged. A small electronic part can arrive wrapped in more plastic than the device itself.

Empty packaging: The net weight of these prawn chips is only 70g, but they come in a plastic wrapper inside a big canister. It would be difficult to recycle the canister as it is made of different materials – paper canister, plastic rim and cover, metal bottom and plastic-laminated paper label.

What a waste. No wonder our landfills are bursting at the seams.

Of course, there is no denying that packaging serves a purpose and cannot be done away with totally.

It protects goods, reduces spoilage, provides information on products and enables their handling, storage and transportation. Under-packaging, on the other hand, can be harmful and wasteful, as when goods are damaged and when food goes bad.

In recent years, mindful manufacturers have minimised their use of packaging – after all, it cuts costs.

Margarine and yoghurt plastic tubs, for instance, now have thinner walls, just like in aluminium cans.

Manufacturers have also made products in higher concentration (such as detergent), offer refill packs and display product information on the container instead of on an extra label or box.

Over-packaging: The huge paper box, when opened, contains a mere 10 cookies inside a plastic bag.

Making packaging smaller and lighter have other ramifications: shipping trucks and containers can carry more, thus saving transportation costs, and greenhouse gas emissions.

But many manufacturers still sheathe their goods in layer after layer of fancy, unnecessary coverings just to lend them a sophisticated presentation and to add perceived value.

Hidden costs

Almost a third of what we toss out are actually containers and wrappings. In Japan, which is known for its elaborate packaging culture, such waste reaches 60%.

Over-packaging not only wastes materials but raises shipping costs and eventually, adds to our already overburdened landfills.

Simply manufacturing those foils, wrappers and containers uses up energy and creates pollutants, as will recycling them.

And consumers are paying for all that over-the-top packaging.

In the United States, the Institute of Packaging Professionals says packaging on average constitutes 7% of the price of a product.

A 2001 survey by the Consumer Association of Penang, however, showed the figure to be between 22% and 55% for some common consumer items such as soft drinks, toothpaste, bottled water, Tetrapak drinks, chilli sauce and yoghurt.

It found spices sold in bottles could be up to 19 times more expensive than those sold in loose form.

This practice of fancy wrappings also cultivates an unhealthy and wasteful consuming mentality – like when we buy a perfume just because the bottle is so pretty!

Aside from over-packaging, the proportion of packing material that can be recycled is also a concern.

Those tiny bits and pieces, in general, are difficult to recycle – the plastic holder tray for yoghurt tubs, thin plastic wrappers (such as the one wrapping drinking straws), aluminium-lined plastic, shrink wraps and foil coverings.

Packaging consisting of a mix of materials (for instance, the chips canister that is made of paper, a tin bottom, plastic rim and cover, and plastic-laminated paper label) is a recycling nightmare.

What will it take to get manufacturers to rethink the packaging of their goods?

Laws that ban excessive packaging and make manufacturers responsible for disposing of the stuff, it would seem.

Such "producer pays" laws will compel them to design packaging for the environment, not the dump. Some 30 countries already have such rules and these have helped shrink packaging waste heaps.

Malaysia, however, still lacks such legislations. In the 1990s, there were talks of the Department of Environment coming out with rules on recycled content for packaging, but nothing came out of it.

Outcry over packaging

Meanwhile, public wrath over wasteful wrappings has provoked an anti-over-packaging movement in cyberspace. Photo-sharing website Flickr has plenty of postings of such items.

The website overpackaging.com shames the perpetrators of excessive packaging. It carries photographs of grossly over-packaged goods, sent in by the public, then writes to the retailers and manufacturers to explain themselves.

Green-minded American giant retailer Wal-Mart has heeded such cut-back calls.

It aims to curtail packaging waste by 5% by 2013. It will choose suppliers who rank highly in their packaging scorecards.

These scorecards are rated on greenhouse gas emissions per tonne of packaging, the raw material used, packaging size, recycled and recyclable content, energy use, transportation impact and innovation.

The Sustainable Packaging Coalition, meanwhile, has released a software program called Comparative Packaging Assessment (or Compass) that helps designers and companies weigh the environmental impact of their packaging.

These green steps, however, are few and far in between. Overall, superfluous wrappings remain commonplace.

It has to do with the psychology of marketing – products with flashy-looking wrapping attract more buyers. But with mounds of trash piling up in our midst, marketing gurus should rethink this strategy of pushing products.

And consumers, on their part, should look beyond pretty packages.

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This article was taken from: The Star Online: Lifestyle: Focus 6 October 2009