I woke up this morning to this email in my inbox. I have often pondered ways to have the manufacturers wake up about the amount of solid waste they use for packaging. I really like this one.
Hi Greg,
Saw your article about one-use throw-aways in the paper. Here's something kind of related: in Germany (my wife's a German national), household garbage is weighed as it is collected and the homeowner is charged by weight for its disposal.
Even more interesting is that a store is required by law to accept (at time of sale) and dispose of any packaging material used in a product they sell. Since consumers would rather the store pay for the garbage, they often leave such materials behind.
Since the stores themselves want to save money, they have put pressure on manufacturers to reduce the amount of packaging material.
The result is that one sees far less of recycle-unfriendly things like bubble-packages, etc. over there.
...Derek
