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Packaging touches everyone every day.
This is the Everything Packaging podcast with David Holliday.
What's up with packaging? Hello there. What's up with packaging? Here are some packaging stories that have gotten my attention in the last week. 1st of all, and this is actually quite a big one.
David:Procter and Gamble is recalling more than 8,000,000 bags of Tide and other laundry detergent brands that they make in the United States and Canada due to a defect in the products child resistant packaging. That could make them too easy for someone to have access to the product basically. These kind of little detergent pods have been in the news quite a bit lately. As there's a move to ban them in some parts of the country noticeably, notably you New York New York City. Last Friday, Procter and Gamble and safety regulators said the outer packaging that's meant to prevent access to the pods can split and there's obviously a problem.
David:My thought quite apart from the recall which is going to be quite expensive for P and G is shouldn't a company with their standards have quality control that finds defects before shipping 8,000,000 products to their customers, something seems quite wrong here. I I don't know. We'll have to watch this story and see what happens. And another story that got my attention this week is from Fast Company and they discussed that Amazon, our good friends amazon.com and I buy everything from Amazon. I'd be the first to admit here.
David:Amazon has been cutting down on the usage of plastics in their packaging. In the last year, they apparently used 11.6 percent less plastic compared to the previous year, which is great. However, most of these reductions took place in countries that have enacted or are threatening to enact restrictions on certain types of plastic packaging. That does not include the USA. The USA has not regulated plastic production on a federal level, which is a bit of a problem and could be a recurring theme here.
David:And yes, some states are certainly introducing their own regulations to track to cut down on packaging pollution, plastic packaging pollution. But shouldn't this be the central government's job? Am I missing something here? I also saw this story in the New York Times about why so much plastic packaging is used for fresh produce. It seems that plastic surrounds just about every item in the produce aisle in the store.
David:Every cucumber, every apple, every pepper, it's just out of control. The article states that this started way back in the 19 thirties with, cellophane and has picked up through plastic clamshells and bagged salads and more things in the, produce aisle. If you're like me, you probably see this all the time. Individual produce items that in the past were not packaged at all are now encased in glorious plastic. What's going on?
David:But it does seem that due to pressure from, I guess, from consumers mainly, the race is on for the people who do grow and sell fruits and vegetables to break plastic stranglehold on produce packaging. How are we going to fix this? And finally, for this week, a short personal experience. We recently moved from Austin in Texas to New Hampshire and one of the very good things about being in Austin was that our local grocery store is HEB, probably the best grocery store chain in the country and as a business, they are super focused on sustainability. No single use plastic bags, for example.
David:Hey, you want a bag? You buy 1 or more of their reusable bags and we use their bags all the time for all kinds of things. But here in New Hampshire, my wife made a grocery run the other day and came back with enough single use plastic bags to half fill a dumpster. I can only assume they either didn't get the memo about sustainability or they decided to just ignore it. Neither of those options is good.
David:Is it? So hey, I promise this will be short. Thank you for watching and see you next week for more what's happening in packaging.