Packaging may be a significant element in a company’s marketing strategy but modern consumer culture has made it sinfully wasteful too. Why, for instance, do so many branded labels sell their garments, socks and lingerie stapled to little plastic hangars? This is especially galling since these hangars are tiny and usually single-rack so they can’t be reused. Toothpaste, creams and shampoos these days are increasingly available in plastic tubes. This may be a lighter and more convenient option but it inevitably results in a high level of wastage. Squeezing the last remnants of toothpaste out of a plastic tube requires much more effort than extracting it from a metal tube – to get an idea of how much of the product is wasted, cut open the tube as you near the end and you’ll find out. Why do fast food companies routinely deliver meals accompanied by plastic cutlery, most of which is invariably discarded? Imagine the savings if the staff simply asked the customer whether cutlery was needed at all?
Sadly, the habit of over-packaging has spread to food retailing as well, and organised retailers are particularly guilty. Think of the amount of plastic you discard after the weekly grocery shopping. It is understandable if processed food is placed in plastic packets. But why fresh chicken, fish or meat? These days, it is weighed, placed in a plastic tub, shrink-wrapped in plastic and then handed to the customer. Is this necessary? Buying fresh vegetables and fruit? Each portion needs to be placed in a separate plastic bag and weighed. Can yoghurt not be sold in thick cardboard cartons instead of plastic tubs? Ditto with butter and margarine.
True, plastic is safer and more convenient to use in a kitchen or bathroom. But the downside of this packaging revolution is that it has made both households and businesses unthinkingly wasteful and uncaring. The proliferation of plastic has put an end to the cloth shopping bags that every household stored and recycled for the purpose. Old clothes and towels are no longer torn up and reused as dusting and polishing rags, and the wide availability of PET bottles and jars means that old glass bottles are no longer re-used for drinking water nor old coffee and jam jars recycled for storing masala.
Scale up to the corporate level and the environmental unfriendliness becomes that much worse. For instance, there was a time when the Indian Railways adopted the charming practice of serving soup and tea in <i> khullars. <p> Now, it’s all thermocol or plastic; why, even the humblest tea vendor uses these materials in place of the pottery cup once so ubiquitous to India. Car companies routinely encase the seats and instruments in new cars in plastic to prevent them from being scratched or damaged. Could cloth or jute not fulfill the same purpose with the additional benefit of allowing the buyer to re-use the covers whenever they choose?
If this sounds like a diatribe, it is. Indian households once followed many resource-saving norms that could well have continued even in modern urban environments. But in westernising ourselves, we have chosen to embrace many of their worst practices and the trend towards over-packaging is one of them.