Dialogue: Boxing clever on rubbish problem

Half-size wheelie bins do not address the root cause of Auckland's rubbish problem. But there is a way to tackle that, writes SHELLEY BRIDGEMAN.

Since our wheelie bins have been halved in size, I've taken great interest in my household rubbish. My hobbies are now tennis, skiing, films, books and thinking up ways to fob potential rubbish off on someone else.

In the first week that the new midget bins were introduced, I even shamefully executed a covert ditching (under cover of the night) of some rubbish bags into a bin outside the local superette.

Anyway, those days are gone and - now that I've been forced to recycle - I'm pleased to say that I have a good grip on the rubbish situation.

I did, however, have a frightening experience recently when a van from a plumbing company was carelessly parked in front of my full bin waiting kerb-side.

I could hear the collection truck lumbering down the street. Would the driver even see my little bin behind the nasty red van? And if he saw it, would he even care? How would I cope for the next week without an empty bin? It was a nail-biting moment.

Thankfully, he not only saw it, he leapt from his cab to manoeuvre my bin to where it could be reached by his truck's tentacle. The driver will never know it but he made my morning. Thank you, Mr Rubbish Man.

Have you noticed that rubbish has become a topic of conversation? We discuss it with a vigour that would have been undreamed of in those heady days of the capacious bins we so foolishly took for granted. Substituting our bins for the dwarf variety was a move akin to shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted. It's a short-sighted strategy designed only to mask the symptoms of our rubbish problem rather than address the root cause.

After all, why should consumers be forced to deal with rubbish for which they are not directly responsible?

It's the makers and suppliers of goods who saddle us with copious and unnecessary packaging.

Manufacturers would try to persuade us that the packaging is for our benefit, but that's a load of old crock.

Millions of dollars are invested in attractive packaging simply to differentiate a product from its competitors. Even packaging that can be viewed as protective to some degree is still largely for the benefit of the manufacturer and the retailer.

The more cushioning a product has, the less care that truck drivers, delivery people and shelf-stackers have to take with it.

The soap I buy is supplied in individual boxes - which is bad enough. But, to make matters worse, if I want to save a few cents and buy a two-pack, two boxes of the soap are simply plastic-wrapped together. It's wasteful and it's a hassle to open, but what does the retailer or manufacturer care?

As long as it's easy to produce and easy for a check-out operator to process, they blithely ignore the fact that I would be happy buying unwrapped soap.

Similarly, six-packs of cola invariably come in cumbersome cardboard containers. While it may be easy to pick it up off the shelf, it's not easy removing the cardboard when you get the goods home.

We would be better off just picking loose cans from the shelf, but then the marketers would lose a point of difference.

If I buy a five-pack of audio tapes, I have to wrench off one layer of plastic wrap, only to find that each individual tape is inconveniently wrapped with its own plastic layer.

Once that comes off, there's a hard plastic case that I don't even want around each tape. That's three layers before I get to what I actually intended to buy.

If you buy a household telephone or a portable radio, chances are it will come in some moulded plastic affair that is twice the size of the item you are buying and impossible to open unless you have a scalpel on hand.

Again, it's unnecessary and inconvenient to the consumer.

Now we have got the small wheelie bins, it's unfair that this extraneous and unwanted packaging becomes our problem as soon as we leave the store.

I need some new saucepans but I am delaying the purchase for fear of the huge cardboard boxes they will doubtless come in. I've got a plan, though.

From now on, once I have bought the goods, I'm going to spend a few minutes rationalising the packaging and leave anything I don't need behind in the store.

Perhaps then, once the shops are forced to bear the weight of rubbish disposal, they will persuade manufacturers to address this frustrating issue.