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Now that there is action on plastic shopping bags, can we open a second front.... blister packs?
June 8, 2012 - 2:38pm
Oh my, an uneditable first post, whatever shall I do with it?
I was really pleased to see the recent move out of Toronto to deal with plastic shopping bags. At the same time, I am hoping that discssions of the environmental costs related to excessive use of plastics in the retail industries will branch out to include the problems with packaging. I am, of course, referring to "blister packs" and "clamshells" (in respect to the latter, I am particularly concerned about the thick, thermally sealed version).
I am frequently distressed by the sheer volume of packaging that I am forced to contend with when purchasing some items, especially hardware or electronics items. All too frequently I find the packaging masses significantly more than the object being purchased itself - most of it plastic. While some of the packaging does come with the small recycling logo indicating which class of plastic is being used, all too often it does not and my suspicion is that the overwhelming majority of it ends up in landfills whether it is one of the plastics that can economically be recycled or not.
Unlike the case of plastic shopping bags (which obviously can be addressed municipally) federal regulation would be required to slow the avalanche of plastic packaging that results from most shopping trips... and with the Cons at the helm, I doubt there will be any action on it in the next few years. But at the same time it strikes me as kind of perverse that I carry around my reusable shopping bags, only to have no choice other than to have to fill them with plastic packaging when making even minor purchases.
i agree!! the idea of making the packaging 10 times the size of the product being sold is ridiculous, even moreso when it's such a damaging material like plastic. I assume it's so it can't be easily pocketed or to make it large so it stands out, but i'm sure there are a million and one ways to do this without using a ton of plastic.
same goes for disposable packing materials like styrofoam, some stuff is shipped with recycled egg carton like stuff but you still see so much styrofoam...
At least plastic shopping bags and styrofoam can be recycled (in toronto at least). The clamshells cannot