Packaging - essay

It was some years ago now, when I had just returned from a very remote part of the world where some would say, "they were still living in the stone age," that I first became aware of "packaging." I recall entering a supermarket to buy some cheese, a luxury I had gone without for a long time. I did not realize what I had until I arrived home and began to unpack my somewhat modest purchases, including the cheese. I found to my amazement that each individual slice of cheese was wrapped in its own carefully sealed (and difficult to open) cellophane wrapper! The individually wrapped slices were carefully packed together inside a larger cellophane wrapper which was, in turn, encased in a box. The box was in a small brown paper bag that was inside a larger brown bag. In other words there were were FIVE different wrappers for each small piece of (not very good) cheese. It was, for me at the time, quite surprising. An eye-opener, you might say.
Having had my attention drawn to this strange and totally unnecessary, even ostentatious phenomenon, I began to pay more attention to packaging. What I learned was terrifying! It would appear there is an international packaging conspiracy dedicated to not only packaging the smallest most insignificant items in as many layers as possible, but also to making it as difficult as possible to unpackage them. Everything nowadays, at least everything in what we like to think of as 'civilized" countries, comes in its own little package - tiny packages of salt or pepper, sugar, both cubed and otherwise, even things like mayonnaise, mustard and ketchup (ugh!). Tiny containers of cream or the equivalent "non-dairy product." Small and large packages of screws, nails, nuts and bolts, even items like padlocks, screwdrivers, and pliers come in their own plastic, sealed and difficult to open vacuum packed containers. Vacuum packed! Why on earth do pliers and screwdrivers need to be vacuum packed? Bologna and salami, maybe. But those come vacuum packed, like everything else, in such a way that after you open them you have to create some new container because of course you can't put anything back in the one you just opened. True, they try to make packages of meats that can be re-closed, but how well does that work? Ridiculous? You bet. Furthermore, it would be interesting to know how many people are injured every year just trying to open their purchases. I bet there are very many but of course the packaging industry lobby would never let you know of such a statistic.
What is equally or more frustrating are so-called "child-proof" containers now so popular with the drug industry. Child-proof indeed! Adult-proof is more like it! I wonder if anyone ever actually tested any of these devices on children? I doubt it. The designers probably designed what THEY thought would be child-proof. Children seem to open the damn things with no trouble whatsoever. I find that I can only open them with great effort. Usually I have to ask my wife to do it. No, she's not childlike, if that's what you’re thinking. She's just more patient (and perhaps more competent) than I.
I am convinced now on the basis of my many years of experience with this phenomenon that the packaging industry has contests to see who can make the most difficult to open packages, who can use the greatest amount of the most exotic material for the most insignificant items, who can invent the most totally irrelevant and useless packages, and so forth. They have also now invented plastic wrap that is virtually impenetrable. Not only that, they are not satisfied to leave perfectly adequate, even superior forms of packaging alone. They are trying, for example (horror of horrors!) to get people to drink wine out of cardboard and plastic containers. The first aluminum beer can might have been a warning of things to come! Who knows how this obsession with packaging has already affected the foods we eat? Who knows what the future will bring? We should stop it now before it gets further out of hand. Square eggs are surely on the horizon. Think how much easier they could be packed. Never mind the poor chickens. Never mind that the eggs will probably taste like some new type of foil. Foil! That reminds me. Did you ever try to unwrap one of those little pie-shaped pieces of assorted cheeses that come eight to a box? Now even going to the grocery store requires a monumental decision – paper or plastic? Thus you must choose between destroying the forests or polluting the landfills. Life is just not simple like it used to be. Where I was living, if you wanted a package you just made it yourself out of a bit of grass, a piece of bamboo, or a few banana or other leaves. Then you just left it to decompose and add to the soil. Oh, happy days!