Lifting the lid on packaging

What's the story with excess packaging?

Every year the boxes lie to us. From early spring, millions of Easter eggs appear on our supermarket shelves and sit there pretending to be enormous. Then, when the vast quantities of cardboard, the rigid plastic and the glittering foil are ripped off by excited hands, all that remains is a rather insignificant egg and a handful of sweets or a couple of bars of chocolate and, perhaps, some plastic novelty item that is as much use as a Christmas cracker treat.

It is doubtful there is any product currently on the market that has, gram for gram, more packaging than an Easter egg. The weight of packaging on four randomly selected Easter eggs we bought last week was just over 700g. The chocolate on its own, meanwhile, weighed in at just under 1.5kg. When all the air and empty space is taken into account is it any wonder the chocolate starts to looks so miserly?

According to retailers, criticism of all the empty space in an Easter egg box is the most common customer complaint at this time of year. The excessive and largely unnecessary packaging is not just misleading and disappointing, it is environmentally unfriendly and costly to consumers as much of the Easter packaging will end up in the country's landfills.

Not all of it, though. Recycling in Ireland has increased dramatically in recent years and in 2005 more than half a million tonnes of packaging was shipped overseas to be re-purposed. Although joining Europe's recycling elite is certainly better than propping up the foot of the eco-table as we did 10 years ago, our new green approach has come at a cost and one which is expected to climb as the greater the demand for recycling the higher the costs associated with it.

The Government has plans to make producers pay more and changes to packaging regulations to be introduced this year will require them to contribute further to the cost of recovering and reusing waste. "I think that this strikes the right balance. If greater recycling brings greater costs, then I believe that more suppliers of packaging - producers - should contribute to meeting this cost rather than householders," the Minister for the Environment Dick Roche, has said.

While the growth of recycling and the Government's apparent commitment to make the producer pay a bigger share is to be welcomed, it would be better still if the packaging had never been used and we did not have to send glass to Northern Ireland to be recycled and cardboard and plastic 8,000 miles to China to be given the same treatment.

Chocolate eggs are not the only culprit. Walk the aisles of any supermarket and you will see vegetables shrink-wrapped in plastic and sitting in plastic trays and small ready meals made to look significantly bigger through the judicious use of outsized cardboard cases.

EARLIER THIS MONTHRepak, the industry-funded recycling initiative, announced the launch of a "packaging prevention programme" aimed at educating industry about the savings that can be made by reducing the amount of packaging produced. "If you can deliver a product to market without packaging it does have significant savings," says Repak's marketing manager Darrell Crowe. "But only if that can happen while making sure the product arrives as it is supposed to."

Businesses are starting to appreciate the benefits of being more careful about the packaging they use. By modifying its systems, Eircom reduced the amount of packaging associated with its broadband service by 15 tonnes a year. For its part, Diageo produced 53 tonnes less of cardboard boxes and 378 tonnes less of glass annually through the introduction of a lighter-weight Bailey's bottle.

Marks & Spencer has promised to reduce its packaging by a quarter by 2012 as it aims to go "carbon neutral" while a number of other stores in Britain including Morrissons, Sainsbury's and Asda are adopting similar strategies. Sainsbury's plans to replace 150 million plastic trays and bags on its ready meals and organic food with compostable packaging and take 3,550 tonnes of plastic from the store's yearly output.

In the US the retailing behemoth Wal-Mart is making steps towards lessening its own footprint and is asking its electronics suppliers to fill out a scorecard that will assess the sustainability of their product. The scorecard will evaluate electronics on their energy efficiency, durability, upgradability and the size of the package containing the product. The store is also establishing an online database aimed at helping its vendors and suppliers to cut excess packaging.

At home many retailers are equally keen to highlight their green credentials. Superquinn assured PriceWatch it was committed to "providing environmentally friendly solutions in all aspects of our business" and claims to sell more loose fresh product than any of its competitors. Tesco Ireland meanwhile is putting in place a programme of measures aimed at reducing the amount of packaging throughout its supply chain and says it is actively working with suppliers to minimise packaging or use more environmentally-friendly forms wherever possible.

While businesses and retailers may be making some efforts to reduce the waste they produce, consumers offset many of the benefits by consuming more and more. In the 1970s the average supermarket had about 2,000 product lines. That number is closer to 18,000 today. Bottles, cans and cartons have all shed at least a quarter of their packaging weight in the last 20 years only for consumption to rise significantly.

The amount of packaging used in Easter eggs is bucking the trend and seems to increase each year. Repak has carried out studies in relation to the egg packaging because of the volume of complaints it has heard. The study showed that 70 per cent of people who buy Easter eggs do so as a gift. They regard the packaging as an integral element of it as it makes their present look more lavish and themselves more generous as a result.

The gift-givers, however, do not have to live with either the disappointment or the waste.