Arnold on ethical marketing

CHRIS ARNOLD

When I was at school I had a Saturday job in a grocers, Sam Cooks I think it was called. The place was still stuck in a post war era and plastic bags were unheard of. Instead, most people bought their own bags in. No one in those days would ever have dreamed of people buying a designer bag with “I’m not a plastic bag” on. If they wanted their veg wrapped it was either in a plain brown paper bag or whatever was left over in the back store room. Nothing went to waste.

Lunchtime’s I’d pop into Chris’ fish bar and get a cod and chips – wrapped in newspaper, no polystyrene tray then.

And every evening we’d put our empty milk bottles outside for collection by the milkman.

Now this may sound like the 1950s but was in fact the mid 80s. It’s easy to forget how quickly things have changed. How we’ve turned into a fast consuming, wasteful society that sees everything as disposable. How now you can’t leave a shop without a plastic bag being thrust into your hand.

Despite Government targets to reduce household waste and landfill, we’re falling well short of the target - no thanks to the supermarkets who are doing little to help. Too many products are seriously over packed. Why does 6 bottles of mineral water need to be wrapped again in plastic? Why does a 6 pack of toilet roles or pack of nappies not have a handle on, saving on the need to put it in a carrier bag?

A survey, just published, conducted by the Local Government Association, reveals that 5% of a typical shopping basket is made up of packaging and up to 40% of the packaging cannot be recycled.

Lidi came out worse, the best was Walmart’s  ASDA with 70%. How ironic that Walmart has scored an ethical plus point. 60% of M&S packaging is recyclable (for the record, although M&S have made great reductions in packaging this was more achievable because in the past they have seriously over packaged.) But it was local retailers who came out best, so if you want to be green shop at your local corner shop.

In Germany they have made supermarkets legally responsible for disposing of packaging. Probably unlikely to happen here as I can’t see Brown bringing that law in given his u-turn on the environment that was revealed in the Guardian this week.

A pole I recently read says that although most of us recycle, a lot of people complain that local authorities could do more to make it easier to do so. People want ‘easy green’ or as one of my clients says “the truth is, the public want to change the world from an armchair”. Some councils however, seem to think the answer to encouraging more recycling is to take an aggressive approach, like Barnet who now fine people. All this does is create a negative attitude towards being green. Being green needs to be positive and even fun, not painful.

Other councils are still poorly educated into what they can recycle, window envelopes are one example. One council was telling residents they couldn’t be when they could. For the record direct mail only accounts for 2% of household waste (less than 1/3 of Sunday papers) and only uses 4.4% of paper used in the UK.

One amazing thing that came out of a MORI pole was that being green is a class thing, and mainly middle class. Certainly explains why you see so many 4x4 at the recycling centres.

There is an obvious need to keep the pressure on supermarkets and producers to reduce unnecessary packaging. And the public needs to act too. After all, the supermarkets all claim they will respond to their customer’s needs, it’s just that we need to get the customer to demand change. But it’s not just the supermarket who are to blame.

One of the things I do find amazing is that packaging designers start with the premise that their packaging will end up in the bin (even if it’s the recycling one). I recently wrote an article on ‘second life packaging’, challenging more designers to design in a second use. Good examples are GU’s glass dishes and the Ty Nant Welsh mineral water bottle – who hasn’t kept one of their deep blue bottles as a vase? But this opens up another ethical debate.

In America several states have banned bottled mineral water because of the packaging and the carbon footprint. And there’s another modern phenomenon – mineral water. Back in the days when I did my Saturday job, if you wanted water you got it from a tap.