One thing that really annoys me in life is the completely pointless overuse of plastics and paper in packaging for everyday items in general.
From milk cartons to supermarket plastic bags, fruit wrapping to microwave meal containers, and Amazon.
com deliveries, the list is endless.
I just don't understand why governments around the world introduce legislation to curb the excessive use of plastics and paper to help reduce the amount that ends up polluting or environment.
Having said that I perfectly understand why they don't: they make money from all the paper and plastics industries and don't want to lose their votes come Election Day.
Only the smallest of percentages of these products are ever recycled and in most countries the last thing people will think about is sorting out the paper, plastics, glass and compost waste into separate bins to then dump them in the proper recycling container.
These people have far more important things to worry about, in fact chances are that they are so poorly educated or informed that they don't even know that the problem exists let alone that there may be something they can do about it.
Politicians around the world continually pledge to reduce pollution and help the environment and continually agree with everyone that it is a good thing and they will try their best to cut down etc.
etc.
knowing full well that in actual fact nothing but the bare minimum will be done and next to no money will be pumped into the local councils to try and combat the issue.
Unfortunately for there to be any significant chance of a change it is not down to individual households to cut back on plastics and paper (we don't package it, we don't have a choice, we get what we are given), it is down to large industry to take a step in the right direction and stop wrapping those pears in another layer of Clingfilm.
I don't understand why they can't cut down.
Surely they save money, lots of it, by saving on extra unnecessary packaging.
Again, the only thing in the way is either the legislation that says they 'have' to protect their products and make sure it arrives to the dealer or customer in good condition or lack of legislation that says they must only use a certain amount of wrapping per unit of surface area.
It could so easily be done.
With the amount of money pointlessly wasted on wars and other such things, I'm sure it would be possible to pretty much eliminate overuse of plastics and paper in one fell swoop.
The amount of junk mail, advertising and local news publications that appear in peoples letter boxes everyday must be absolutely phenomenal, I wonder if anyone has ever measured how much of that pointless crap is simply thrown straight into the bin! The amount of times I have ordered books from Amazon to find they turn up in a box containing a cardboard supporting structure and advertising leaflets inside and also wrapped in plastic with an invoice attached is incredible.
They are just books, 90% of the time they are paperbacks, as long as they are delivered properly they won't need all that excess paper and plastic, chuck them in a padded bag and just deliver them properly.
Another thing I don't get is all these free newspapers, well, newspapers in general actually.
I read most of my news of the internet for free and of the television.
I believe it is simply a form of habit that people need to physically have massive bits of paper in front of them everyday to soak up the news.
I am sure that if free newspapers weren't available nobody would actually care.
They would just have to wait until they get into the office to check it on their computers or radio or TV.