Campaign aims to reduce the mountains of waste

By Michael McCarthy, Martin Hickman and Geneviève Roberts

Published: 22 January 2007

The shrink-wrapped swede, bought from a London supermarket at the weekend, says it all. Why on earth add a skin to something that's got a tough enough skin of its own?

Wrapping that's entirely unnecessary is not confined to root vegetables: it's everywhere. And today The Independent launches a campaign to highlight how environmentally unfriendly, how problematic and - not least - how irritating the phenomenon of packaging and packaging waste has become.

We are asking readers to be at the forefront of it, to bring home to supermarkets and other major retailers how imperative is the need to slim down radically the avalanche of bags, trays, wrappers, boxes, parcels, cartons, cardboard, plastic, foil and clingfilm that is sweeping over our lives.

Packaging presents a problem for several reasons. Firstly, it uses up huge volumes of natural resources: oil for plastic trays, bags and wrappers; trees for paper, cartons, and cardboard; aluminium for tins and cans; glass for jars and bottles. About eight per cent of global oil production is used to make plastic, of which a quarter is thought to end up in packaging. Secondly, climate change is hastened by the greenhouse gas emissions from the energy used to make and transport the containers.

Thirdly, there is the problem of disposal. The packaging industry claims that, with the quadrupling of recycling rates in the past decade, 60 per cent of packaging is now recycled; but even so, it admits that five million tons of it is dumped in holes in the ground. The UK's landfill sites are filling up and finding new ones is a problem. In 2002, the Environment Agency warned that sites in the South-east would be full in seven years' time. New EU regulations require the UK to cut waste going to landfill by half by 2013, and to a quarter of the current level by 2020.

Fourthly, packaging itself is expensive and adds to retail prices. The Government's Waste Resources Action Programme (WRAP) says that families spend £470 on packaging each year, one-sixth of their food budget.

Finally, packaging is now often designed to encourage over-consumption, and it particularly angers consumers. Many people who have fancied an apple will have been irritated by the fact that they may only have been able to buy four of them, sitting on an unrecyclable plastic tray, surrounded by clingfilm. In market research, stores have picked up packaging as one of the issues that most grates with customers. The industry argues that, as products need to be protected in travelling to reach the shops, under-packaging creates more waste.

But packaging performs another, commercial, function: it engages and entices the customer, and often exaggerates the size of a product. This is particularly noticeable in the rapidly growing trend for seasonal merchandise, whether for Christmas toys, Easter eggs or Halloween masks.

We are launching the campaign at what is a key moment for deciding on how we handle our waste products in the future, for two reasons. Firstly, the Government will soon produce a national waste strategy, the first for seven years; we believe new measures to force a cutback in packaging should be part of it.

Secondly, most of the major supermarkets have begun to realise that they do have to act on packaging, and have signed an agreement to tackle it. Furthermore, only last week two of them, Marks and Spencer and Tesco, announced multimillion-pound environmental programmes that included packaging reductions. Yet we believe that all of them need to go further and faster, and to this end we are inviting Independent readers to highlight the worst, most unnecessary and most ridiculously over-packaged items they can find on supermarket shelves, or in other outlets: we will take them up with the retailer concerned, and see if they act on it. We feel the campaign will touch a nerve with the public; environmental and consumer groups such as Friends of the Earth and the Women's Institute are backing it strongly.

For whatever the promises of Tesco and its fellows, just a moderate shopping-bag full of supermarket groceries (with that swede at the top of our list) vividly illustrated how strongly wedded they still are to the packaging way of doing things.

The result is remarkable: of the 30 million tons or so of household rubbish we produce every year, about a quarter by weight, and as much as 60 per cent by volume, is packaging waste.

"There's still no room for complacency, but things are moving the right way," said Jane Bickerstaffe, the director of the Industry Council for Packaging and the Environment.

That's as may be - but the point of our campaign is simply to get retailers to use less of it.

Take that shrink-wrapped swede. We asked the supermarket chain Morrisons - not the only supermarket guilty of over-packaging - who had it on the shelves of their store in Camden Town, London, why they thought shrink-wrapping a swede was necessary. The company replied: "The packaging ensures the product is fresh and minimises potential damage."

Well, maybe you think that is reasonable. But maybe you don't.

So if you're the sort of person who thinks that shrink-wrapping a swede is verging on bonkers, have a look around your local supermarket and see if you can find anything just as bad - or even something to top it. We will take it up with the retailer.

How you can help

* Do you have an example of absurd packaging? Have you been infuriated by the waste that came with something you bought recently? If so, tell us the details and we will highlight it in 'The Independent' and take it up with the companies concerned. Send your examples to waste@ independent.co.uk

'The amount of excess packaging is preposterous'

Peter Tatchell, gay rights campaigner

I'm supporting The Independent's campaign, because I've long been active in green issues. A lot of electrical goods come with a surplus of packaging . And it always annoys me when you see fruit and vegetables individually wrapped.

Antony Beevor, historian

I completely support The Independent's campaign, because the amount of excessive packaging is preposterous. Getting into some packaging is almost impossible: everything from food to razors comes sealed in semi-rigid plastic.

Meera Syal, actress

I'm a fiendish recycler so it annoys me that so much packaging just has to be thrown away. Maybe the supermarkets should take the approach of the farmers' markets - it's so much nicer when everything is all out in the open.

Claire Rayner, agony aunt

Packaging is the very devil to get rid of. You try to recycle, and they take away your cardboard or your glass, but they can't take plastics or great slabs of polystyrene. Things like fruit and vegetables do not need to be wrapped up at all.

Ralph Steadman, cartoonist

We don't need any packaging at all. The whole thing is ridiculous: you find things like parsnips sealed in clingfilm and then wrapped in a plastic bag. People should refuse packaging and just put what they buy straight in their bags.

Tony Juniper, director, Friends of the Earth

I'm constantly trying to avoid unnecessary packaging, from apples wrapped in plastic to the free bag you're given with everything else. A lot of packaging is more about advertising than protecting the product.