Save the planet, stop excessive packaging.

Disturbing isn’t it, but before the flaming flaming begins, let me explain…

So as I took out the garbage last night, one of my trash bins tipped over spilling half a week’s worth of refuse on the lawn. As I cleaned up the resulting mess, I had some unusual quality time to consider what makes up my trash. Besides paper towels and diapers, the vast majority of the litter was packaging. Food/product packaging for just my family pretty much filled two garbage cans in one week. Now I am certainly no hippie or environmentalist, quite frankly I’d drive a car that ran on puppies if it doubled my miles per gallon, but I will gladly participate in logical steps to protect our one and only planet and it seems like this is one instance that needs some attention.

Sure recycling is a step in the right direction, but the fundamental solution I suggest is even simpler, stop excessive packaging. Why, instead of ads and pictures all over the products we buy, don’t they just have one of those pictures on the aisles we buy them from? That way the food or product we buy can be in the least amount of packaging possible. Kind of like Ikea, where there is one example of the furniture shown, but when you pick it up it comes in a minimalist box. In theory, the products will cost less and maintain the same quality. Most importantly for me, I will have to carry less crap to the curb. I wouldn’t mind refillable containers as well. I mean it works for milk bottles in the 50s and five gallon water bottles now, why not for other products when the planet really needs it?

Until we make such a change, I will recycle what I can and hope that excessive packaging becomes as disturbing to folks as the pictured packages above. Save the Earth, reduce excessive packages, I mean packaging.