Don't you just hate waste of resources??

What really bugs me is the practice of sealing a number of things--food, pencils, whatever--into packages so that I'm forced to buy more of the item than I want or need, & in some cases, more than I can afford! I can't eat 4 tomatoes before 1 goes bad! I don't need 2 dozen ink pens; I need one, & I'm not shopping for a whole frikken office! And then there's the famous example of those companies with related products who sell in unmatched amounts. Think hot dogs & hot dog buns--8 in one, 10 in the other! What is the reason for this? Stores didn't used to force you to buy in multiples. You could walk into a store & buy A tomato, ONE nail, whatever. A few mom-&-pop stores still do this in the U.S., but most of us only have access to the mega-marts. Even the stop-&-robs sell in sealed batches! When I went to London years ago, one could shop a block (they say "streets" there) or so away from where one lived, so I'd go down the local "high street" & browse the little shops there, picking up 1 or 2 rashers of bacon from one shop, a couple of eggs from another, & so on 'til I'd podged together a decent breakfast. I'd take maybe 20 minutes to get all I needed & be back to cook it. Same thing for the other meals. Much more convenient, swift & reasonable than the way we do it! It reminded me of the literal mom-&-pops at which we shopped in the 50s. I miss those, & not just for the reason I posted this, but because the owner(s) of the stores knew you, stocked what you liked, would let you run a tab, & in many other ways went out of their ways to accommodate your needs. I'm not sure how we could encourage that kind of service now--the "Big-Box" stores have a grip on peoples' minds--but I suspect that they could at least try to pay more attention to service, & offer non-bunched items to those who want them! I mean, they list--even on the shelves where items are standing!--what the price-per-unit is, so since that price is in their computers already, all a customer would have to do is give the checker the item, let it be scanned, & then pay the per-unit cost--hey, presto! No more rotten, wasted food, or stuff to store 'til you run out of room to store stuff! There! I feel better now. Thanks for the soapbox! Maggiepie "The trouble with ignorance is that it picks up confidence as it goes along." ~ Source unknown

That certainly looks like wasted packaging from where I am. The flip side is that at least we can recycle it to produce other paper products, so at least it is in the loop. It would not take a lot of effort to package things more appropriately. What really annoys me is all the blister packs that, all too often, are not recyclable.

when ever possible, I try to reuse things like that or recycle it if I can't

Hiya chem, Wastage that annoys me could be a lot. You are right they only needed to put it in a little piece of packaging stuff and away and a smaller Box too a much smaller Box by the sound of it. Then they complain they are losing Money. I keep a lot of packaging stuff and it has come in very handy this Year at least on many occasions. So you see I kept all the waste and reused it again. I only hope that the other People on the other end did the same thing.

When I was a kid my mom had a copy of the Legend of the Thunderbird, a native American legend. It really influenced how I look at things and yes, waste is a biggy for me. In the legend, a young boy killed a Thunderbird, part of a pair which had been carrying off children from his village. The mate of the bird he killed told him that he would stop terrorizing the village if the village did not waste his mate's body. They had to use everything - the hide, the meat, the bones, the feathers...nothing was to be wasted. I don't know what tribe of native Americans the legend comes from but it is one of my favorites.

I certainly do, the amount of waste in the packaging from the children's Christmas presents was absolutely ridiculous! I filled my rcycling bin up and still had a load to take down to the recycling cenntre. And as for all those stupid wire things they hold the presents in with grrrrrrrrrrrrr

Oh gosh! Yeah, that is a real waste. They could have put it in a padded envelope. I am sure with a big company like Amazon, that they use different sizes of boxes and envelopes. No wonder why prices keep going up. Not to mention, what a waste of paper.

The fact it takes about ten minutes to open a lot of DVDs because it is wrapped in so much plastic. That is so annoying. Not to mention the security seals but I can at least understand that. Still that is rather wasteful. Putting anything in more material than it is absolutely necessary is a frustration, not to mention it takes time out of my life to actually opening. So that really does annoy me on a number of levels, on the wasting resources level and the wasting my time level.

Hi there, If you think that's a waste of time you should've seen my stepson's package. He just bought an xbox 360 and a years Xbox live membership. The membership was a scratch card inside a plastic rapper, stuck to piece of cardboard, inside a game box and guess what.... that's right inside a plastic rapper. Why not just have a scratch card inside a plastic rapper.