Packaging!

[prison break fan]

Yesterday I bought a new ash pan for the sittingroom fire. I begrudged doing it because it cost £8 50p and I had to travel 12 miles to buy it. It came in a cardboard box. Inside the box the pan was in a plastic bag, inside the bag were two sheets of tissue paper, the pan had a cardboard label attatched by a plastic tie, the handle was wrapped separately in corrugated cardboard, and finally a sachet of silica gel! I bought it from an independant ironmongers so didn't feel brave enough to leave the packaging but I did make my feelings known! They agreed! pbf.

[Green Aura]

I agree that the sheer quantity of pack is unwarranted pbf. But by today's standards that positively green!

With only a plastic bag and a plastic tie at least the rest is compostable, combustible etc.

I'm constantly astounded by the packaging around stuff I get. People still use those polystyrene packing beads instead of the "wotsits" type ones. People must think I'm really ungreen(?) because I re-use them to send my things out - the wotsits ones go in the compost, I get so many.

[crowsashes]

i cant stand the amount of packaging i get, it drives me up the bloody wall! i hate the fact cucumbers are wrapped they have a skin!
this year to avoid the packaging ive brought second hand or made my own xmas pressies! the one thing i really cant stand is those individual wrapped food stuff my mum buys like fruit juice for kids and mini cereals, not only do they have their individual wrappers but also a wrapper to hold them all together!

it does drive me mad but thankfully there are some slightly less packaged goods out there if i need to buy them!.

some companies are seeing sense and are thinking more about how they package goods, but this time of year it is stupid, seen how much packing a 6 pack of mice pies has? but the worst are easter eggs!

[prison break fan]

I couldn't bring myself to buy mice pies!! pbf.

[crowsashes]

oh i dont either but my mum does and whenever i go round i see all her excessively packaged stuff!

i much prefer homemade ones if im honest, taste so much better

[Silver Ether]

oh dear you want to order glass for doing stained glass stuff ... I have to do it on-line as only one supplier that I can get to and the choice is poor...I know its glass and fragile but love a duck ... I have never seen so may of those white things ... I think thats what GA terms wotsits ... a box as big as a house and that doesnt matter how much I order ... but at least this last company I have tried re uses boxes ad the glass is wrapped in corrigated card so if I dont reuse it its at least recycable

[indy]

This is where in most cases good old fashioned solid fuel rayburns make great waste disposers I bought my dad a mini chopper thingy because he has hurt his arm and therefore it hurts him to chop.... good grief the packaging I had to undo to get it out for him, I was surrounded!!!

[dave45]

Indy - so you burn plastic packaging in your Rayburn? I am having some difficulty finding a straight answer about what by-products are created by doing this.

Plastic bags and wraps etc are usually low density polyethylene - LDPE - made of hydrocarbon chains (chemically lots of Cs and Hs). So a thorough burning (combining with oxygen) should produce just CO2 and H2O. Which means (I think) high-temperature, so wait until your stove is really hot. Partial combustion might provide other hydrocarbons. But what? Some suggest dioxins (a chemical structure), which causes some greenies to go bonkers with horror - I think they are confusing things with TCDD also known as "dioxin" - a serious chlorinated industrial pollutant - but LDPE doesn't contain any chlorine so it can't!

In any case how do the smoke products of burning LDPE compare with woodsmoke? they are pretty nasty too.

Overall I would like to think that burning single-trip plastic packaging is a better answer than landfilling. I use my plastic bags for hauling logs from the garage until the bags split, then I burn them. But is this just wishful thinking?

[fruitcake]

I'm absolutely with you all on the rant re packaging - it's 'doin my head in'.

I usually save packaging to reuse but I've just cleared out everything that is recyclable/compostable and I've still got heaps - I've also just flogged a pile of stuff on fleabay and used up bubblewrap, jiffy bags and some of these plastic envelope bag things too but i still feel like I have as much as I started with - argghh. Why do people have to buy so much packaging to send stuff in - I think its impossible to reuse it all!

Bah humbug

[crowsashes]

i brought a tea set the other day, my teapot cracked and i saw a lovely one but boots had a tea set with a similar pot for a few quid less ( on sale ) and two cups and a tray to boot all currently in use after porcelain teacup accidents ( men never learn !)

it had a stiff plastic cover ( thankfully i can reuse that in my card making) a card sleeve over that ( again ive reused as it had a pretty printed stripe and cherry pattern) another card insert to hold all the bits together! aswell as bits inside the cups to hold them in place ( plastic)

im getting really conscious now of my packaging as im aiming for zero landfill waste by the middle of the year!

[Annpan]

For the plastic wotsits - I know they are a big waste but, try offering them on freecycle (to be reused for packaging/insulation/kids crafts/etc)

[indy]

I do on the odd occasion burn plastic on the rayburn, not often but I do feel that its better than spending 500 years or what ever in landfill. Am sure I might get lambasted for that

[ElizabethBinary]

My friend says her most hated person in the world that she's someday gonna kill is the ****** who decided it was a brilliant idea to put stickers on every single piece of fruit in the shops. Not only is it a waste, who the eff doesn't know what a peach is? And then you go home to preserve and spend two hours peeling stickers off your food!!

[Bonniegirl]

Sounds a bit like pass the parcel doesn't with all the wrapping.

The trouble is it's a bit of a catch 22, I don't want the packaging but I don't wan't the item I'm buying damaged either.

If the packaging was 100% recyclable then it shouldn't be a problem, but it does seem to be very OTT on some items!

[indy]

Oh god, I so agree with the fruit stickers thing!! They drive me mad!!