The end of the year seems a natural moment to take a look back and think of how our lives that could be improved upon; then look ahead at the year to come and plan how to do things better. As Oprah so eloquently put it, “Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right.”
New Year’s resolutions are something I wholeheartedly endorse and I’m going to share one of mine with you. Hopefully that will encourage me to stick to it.
Resolution: Deal productively with excessive or unrecyclable packaging.
The problem with excessive packaging is it wastes raw materials. The majority of it ends up in our landfills and a lot of it is made of plastic that isn’t marked for recycling. So, this year, I’d like to “voice” my protest against over-packaging. Accomplishing my resolution: I plan to be more thoughtful about my purchases. If a product has excessive or unrecyclable packaging, I’m going to rethink if I need the product. And, if I do, I’ll look for an alternative brand with less packaging, or more environmentally friendly packaging. I also would like to contact the company with the packaging issue and let them know why I won’t be buying their product. The details - Write a shopping list for every trip to the store so not to be tempted by the beautifully designed, over-packaged item.
- Bring a pen and paper to write down the customer feedback information on the side panel so I can take action.
- Buy the biggest size possible. For example, when buying yogurt, avoid the individual-serving sizes and purchase the largest container.
- When appropriate, buy gently used items. This is a way to kind of recycle the product’s original packaging. Every time an item is used again it makes a new purchase unnecessary, diluting the impact of its original manufacturing, transport and packaging.
We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.
— Edith Lovejoy Pierce
