Palmwoods
District News

December
1998

Page 10

Waste management

The pressures to deal responsibly with household waste are ever increasing. Recycle bins and rebates are among the tools used in encouraging or coercing us to act in the best interests of the environment. Many more great ideas for ways in which the consumer can help have been proferred.

However, one of the larger contributors to unnecessary community waste is product manufacturers who exceed necessary packaging requirements for the safe delivery of their goods. This is the kind of packaging which is devoted to the promotion of the product and the enhancing of its visual appeal. This type of marketing could be effectively restricted to the display area within the outlet and not on each piece of product.

There is an effective deterrent against this excessive generation of waste products. Consumers should be encouraged to discard all unnecessary packaging at time of purchase or alternatively to return all unnecessary packaging to the point of sale. Any retail outlet not prepared to accept the return of packaging could then be avoided in future shopping. In this way the consumer becomes part of a powerful pressure group capable of having an impact on the "bottom line" of any business. His obvious recourse is to demand the manufacturer/producer limit packaging to the minimum required for the safe delivery of his product.

Look around you and see just how much waste you bring home from every shopping trip. It doesn’t take a lot of lateral thought to appreciate the "knock on" effect involved in the manufacture, processing, resourcing and distribution of unnecessary packaging and its environmental impact.

Hit the culprit where it hurts the most - his pocket.

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