Fight against Over-packaging
Ask someone what they have done to help the environment recently and they will almost certainly mention recycling. Recycling in the home is very important, of course. However, being forced to recycle often means we already have more material than we need. We are dealing with the results of that 【over-consumption】 in the greenest way possible, but it would he far better if we did not need to bring so much material home in the first place.
The total amount of packaging increased by 12% between 1999 and 2005. It now makes up a third of a typical household ' s waste in the UK. In many supennarkets nowadays food items are packaged twice with plastic and cardboard.
Too much packaging is doing serious damage to the environment. The IK, for example, is running out of it for carry ing this unnecessary waste. If such packaging is burnt, it gives off greenhouse gases which go on to cause the greenhouse effect. Recycling helps, but the process itself uses energy. The solution is not to produce such items in the first place. Food waste is a serious problem, too. Too many supermarkets encourage customers to buy more than they need. However, a few of them are coming round to the idea that this cannot continue, encouraging customers to reuse their plastic bags, for example.
But this is not just about supermarkets. It is about all of us. We have learned to associate packaging with quality. We have learned to think that something unpackaged is of poor quality. This is especially true of food. But it also applies to a wide range of consumer products, which often have far more packaging than necessary.
There are signs of hope. As more of us recycle, we are beginning to realize just how many unnecessary things are being collected. We need to face the wastefulness of our consumer culture, but we have a mountain to climb.
2.The author uses figures in Paragraph 2 to show ______.