Inane Cellophane

Packaging is sometimes excessive. Remember Christmas morning? A box within a box covered by wrap, ribbons and a cellotape bow? Showy products I suppose are a better impulse buy than their plainer cousins, but at what cost?

Japan is the king of individually wrapped snack. You can buy a bag of 200 cookies the size of American quarters, all in their own Ryan-proof wrapper. So what you end up with is a mound of these completely unrecyclable bits o' refuse and a furrowed brow. Now before you accuse me of being an environmentalist fundamentalist terrorist exhibitionist, I will admit that it is unreal to expect everything to be recycled. But how about 20-30 percent? That's a pretty good goal, no?

Here are some highlights of individually wrapped things I have found around the globe (but mostly in Japan and Costscos in the US, Korea and Japan):

Individually wrapped sunflower seeds (3-5 seeds per package)

individually wrapped chocolate covered raisins (5 raisins per package)

Individually wrapped cookies (mentioned above)

Individually wrapped breath mints and chicklets of gum

Individually wrapped Chocolates. (the box was sold in a thick vinyl bag and shrink-wrapped.

All that plastic thrown into the bin is incinerated and released for we humans to breathe in. Now that's progress!