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s other contributors to this issue may have noted, reading these articles from the past is a little like opening one of those time capsules left for future generations to find. How like us they and their concerns were; yet also, how different.
For example, in his erudite article B I Turtle, of the then Metal Box Company (a company I once worked for myself), concentrates on the problem of waste packaging. But he approaches it not from the perspective of the packaging consumers have to deal with, which is what preoccupies most of us today, but of the waste that retailers, particularly supermarkets, had to deal with.
In the 1960s it seems that retailers were inundated with cardboard boxes, containing manufactured products, with items for their shelves. It is not clear what happened to the boxes once they were unpacked: landfill presumably. Whatever happened to them, Mr Turtle identifies heavy outer containers as a major “supermarket waste disposal problem”.
The packaging industry came to the rescue with the idea of shrink wrapping, which Turtle claimed resulted in a 50 percent reduction in waste to be disposed of by retailers (note that some sales packaging needed to be strengthened to allow it to be shrink wrapped.)
In a throwaway line that seems outrageous today, he also extols the virtue of shrink wrapping for grouping packaging with the result that “the shopper takes away all the waste for you except for a few grams of polythene”.
Reflecting the times, he also refers to information on the packaging telling the housewife how to use the contents. Few men could get away with that today! |
