Reduce, recycle, reuse: Maine efforts should be redoubled

We Mainers have always been a frugal lot. We go to great lengths to reduce, reuse and recycle.

To reduce the waste your household generates, you can start at the grocery store. If you can use larger, bulk food items, buy them. These larger sized packages are often much less wasteful than the smaller ones. It’s not rocket science that milk, bread, cereal and other items have a relatively short shelf life. If the food spoils or is otherwise unused, then any savings are lost – lost product, lost transportation costs, lost packaging costs, increased waste stream. It is reported that a family that uses the most efficient-sized products will use one-fifth the waste packaging of a family that uses the least economical packaging.

In a study by the University of Michigan School of Packaging, there were several recommendations to reduce packaging waste. Buying products that are in concentrated forms, where water is added later, such as orange juice and some cleaning agents, helps. The most effective packaging often uses a single wrapped piece of paper or plastic. In earlier times and to a somewhat lesser degree today, shoppers brought their own containers to the farmer for produce: bushel baskets, burlap bags and milk containers that belonged to the buyer were used again and again. When looking at the marketplaces of many developing countries, the creative use of thin plastic bags for packaging is very inventive.

When it comes to your favorite brand-name food product, often there are toll-free telephone numbers on the package for customer comments. Take the time to call them and weigh-in with your perception of the quality and quantity of the packaging of their product, both good and bad.

Corporate America has also become energy and waste conscious. Some of their success stories are the stuff legends are made of, including the serious dollars and cents saved. For example, Pepsi switched from a corrugated cardboard, one-use shipping container to a reusable plastic shipping container, saving the company $44 million and conserving 196 million pounds of corrugated cardboard.

Hasbro, the toy manufacturer, reduced the thickness of their corrugated cardboard packages by 15 percent and saved $400,000 and 763,000 pounds of waste. BellSouth switched to an electronic filing system and conserved 16 million pages of computer printout paper with a savings of $3.5 million. Employees can access individual pages of their territory report, whereas in the past, the entire report of many pages had to be printed.

Aging baby boomers well remember when commercial packaging was less prevalent than it is today. Many of today’s products are more packaging than product. If we wish to leave a legacy for the generations that follow, we need to increase our efforts to reduce the size of the waste stream that lessens the quality of their future.

Consumer Forum is a collaboration of the Bangor Daily News and Northeast CONTACT for Better Business, Inc., Maine’s membership-funded, nonprofit organization. An individual annual membership is $25; business memberships start at $125. For consumer help and information write: Consumer Forum, Bangor Daily News, P.O. Box 1329, Bangor 04402-1329.