For the average consumer, getting rid of an old box or bottle is as easy as throwing it in the bin. Thanks to the wonders of modern society, once your rubbish gets picked up it apparently disappears forever.
It is tempting to imagine there is a black hole somewhere that swallows it all up. The reality is a bit more messy, though.
Every item you throw away in the course of your life (and every item everyone else throws away, for that matter, making for millions of tonnes of rubbish a year) has to end up somewhere. When it comes to packaging, up to 38 per cent is disposed of, mostly in landfill.
In fact, since 1997 only some countries, such as Denmark and Austria, have reduced their per capita generation of packaging waste. In other European countries, the quantities have increased. This increases the environmental burden for a number of reasons, such as:
- Landfill sites have historically been subject to controversy in local communities because they have been associated with environmental pollution, noise and smell, although more modern landfills are less prone to these problems.
- Biological degradation processes in landfill sites can lead to the production of large amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas, which (except in modern landfills when it is recovered and used for energy generation) can be released into the atmosphere.
- The transportation and dumping of materials in landfill consumes energy and leads to the loss of raw materials.
One reason why the amount of waste is growing across Europe is because of the growth of smaller-size households, which leads to higher per capita consumption.
A single-person household, for example, produces, on average, around 11 kilos of waste a week. If this same person lived in a four-person household then he or she would produce an average of just four kilos of waste.
Of this waste, about a quarter is packaging. But having less packaging is not necessarily better for the environment, as packages fulfil important functions such as isolating a product from the environment so it does not spoil.
That is why, according to the Packaging Recovery Organisation Europe: "A more effective way of preventing waste includes actions aimed at protecting products, optimising packaging and returning raw materials and energy to the production process."