If you have been keeping in eye on the environment news this week I am sure you have noticed the review Local Government Association (LGA) commissioned on supermarket packaging. The LGA commissioned the British Research Bureau to collect and analyse packaging for 29 common food items from 8 supermarkets. The study showed that Waitrose had the most packaging with 803g and Tesco the least with 646g. Lidl had the lowest percent of recyclable packging (58%) and Sainbury’s has the highest proportion of recyclable packaging with 66%. The LGA wants supermarkets to help pay for recycling services and reduce the 1.8bn councils will spend in landfill tax on rubbish sites up to 2011.

LGA said that while more people are recycling they are being held back by supermarkets. Families are fed up with having to carry so much packaging home from the supermarket. Reducing packaging would mean less cost at the tills and also less cost for taxpayers as there will be less packaging sent to landfill. Landfill costs the councils £32 for each tonne of rubbish, this will rise to £48 a tonne by 2010.

We at Giraffe often get images sent to us with examples of over-packaging. Here are a few examples:

This picture below was sent in to us by a person who had ordered a book online and received the book in a box so large the daughter could fit into it!

Source: The Guardian & The Times

This entry was posted on Friday, February 20th, 2009 at 10:16 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.