Recycle

I was reading an article today on Environmental Leader about the plastics industry increasing its recycling efforts.  It made me think about packaging for other items as well…like video cards.

The other day I was in Best Buy looking for a TV tuner and I found myself in and around the video cards.  Four or five years ago, when I last purchased a video card (before moving to a laptop full-time), there were colors everywhere!  Packaging was easily 19x the size of the video card!  Last week, the packaging that displayed before me was light, agile and somewhat boring.

I’ve noticed this with other items as well, like when I purchased my new cell phone.  Everything was stuffed in there so tight that everything would not have fit if you emptied everything on a bed and randomly jammed it back in so  you could return the item as quickly as possible.

I’m sure this phenomena, however, is in correlation with an attempt to cut costs.  But anyway, the article about the plastics dudes…

PWP Industries recently announced that it is to open a second recycling facility with the annual capacity to recycle 40 million pounds of post-consumer plastics.  It is expected to open in the second quarter of 2010.  There is a second phase of the plan, which will roll-out the following year.

Another bottled water company, Native Waters, LLC, is introducing a product Native Water, which boasts environmentally friendly packaging.  The European plastics industry launched a plastics challenge, dubbed “The Plastics 2020 Challenge” to promote doubling the rate of plastics packaging by 2020.  Hopefully the US will follow suit.

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