Clearing the Clutter

Last week I informed people about a lifestyle that a few people have been choosing in the past couple of years. A lifestyle where we create little to no trash, and instead refuse packaged items and resort to reusable containers. I also described my vision of grocery stores making this lifestyle easier for people who wish to shop and live this way. My main concept for this vision is to limit packaging. The two principles that I applied to my vision were take waste and make it your resource and using  materials that have more than one end use.

I feel that stores should make an effort to reduce wasted packaging that no one really wants other than to make sure breakables stay safe and food from going stale. I have found that there are more than just two principles that can help support my vision. One of my new principles is to think about the environment when designing. Businesses could come up with more creative ways to package things, ways that make the packaging reusable instead of a waste of space. That also goes hand in hand with my other new principle, be spring with material usage. If a company must use packaging on something, then they can at least use the least amount of packaging possible. I found a really good example of this to be Aquafina (by PepsiCo) who in 2009 decided to use 50% less plastic in their bottles and also took out the cardboard lining inside the 24 packs. If stores started to only buy packaged products from companies who do this type of thing, than we could severely cut down on the amount of packaging in everything.
 

Not only is packaging a waste, but every package has something different printed on it and a different graphic. The printing process that all packaging goes through is also harmful to the environment. In the reading "Textile Futures", Becky Earley talks about how she came up with a fabric printing process called exhaust printing. It is a lot like exhaust dyeing because it reuses dye solutions already in the fabric. This helps reduce water pollution and also minimizes chemical waste. I know the fabrics she uses have already been dyed before she gets them, but I think this is something that could be mimicked for packaging of all kinds and not just in clothes.

The reading "Sustainable Fashion and Textiles", talks a lot about making local purchases and tries to steer people away from shopping online or anywhere where lots of energy is used to deliver products or materials.  If local grocery stores were to buy more of their products locally than I think that it would make it easier to keep the food in the bins fresh. It would be easier to get things without packaging and would be healthier for consumers in the long run.

I am not saying that packaging should be completely done away with for everything. I am simply saying that if we can reduce the amount of and the harmful processes of creating packaging, I think we can reduce the amount of trash going to landfills each year. If we can reduce the amount of clutter we bring into our home, we can reduce the amount of clearing out we will have to do later.