Free Orville Redenbacher's New Caramel & White Cheddar Popcorn from Influenster Comes With Inflated Packaging

On Friday, I received a very large cardboard box from the post carrier. I was confused as to what it was, until I turned it over and saw the Orville Redenbacher's logo on the other side. I knew that Influenster was sending me something from Orville Redenbacher's for free to review on their app, so from the size of the box (over one foot long, at least eight inches wide, and several inches deep), I thought there must be more than one product that I would be reviewing.

What could be in this giant cardboard box?

But there wasn't. When I opened the large cardboard box, there was just one foil bag of Orville Redenbacher's new Caramel & White Cheddar Popcorn and a card.

This was all that I found in the box.

That's a lot of extra room in the box for this one bag of popcorn and card.

I was heartened to see it was a flavour combination that I could get into, caramel and white cheddar, but then I felt the bag. It was mostly empty. I know people here might interject about "slack fill" to prevent crushing of the popcorn in transit, but surely 3/5 - 4/5 of the bag doesn't need to be empty to preserve the integrity of the popcorn. Why not just make the bag smaller and use less resources in its manufacture?

A bag of Caramel & White Cheddar popcorn.

The bag looked very big, so it seemed like there would be a lot of popcorn inside.

But there was actually a lot of empty bag.

This is what I found when I actually opened the bag. It looked almost empty.

Now, onto the popcorn itself. It was well preserved in transit, no doubt due to its huge armored box and the excessive slack fill. The popcorn was very fresh. It tasted like caramel corn from a country fair mixed with Smart Food, this kind of white cheddar popcorn snack that I remember from my youth. The sweet and salty combination was pleasant. And when I didn't feel salty or didn't feel sweet, I could just pick one or the other out (they're just mixed half and half in the bag together). My husband is not a big fan of mixed sweet and salty snacks and he even liked it, so that's quite a compliment because he's picky.

Caramel corn is mixed equally with white cheddar popcorn.

If you're a fan of salty and sweet combo snacks and you like popcorn, you'll probably like this.

So, the product itself tasted really good to me, but the packaging has a ways to go. It seems wasteful to me. I am not a fan of overpackaging, so the snack's tastiness was somewhat tainted by this. All the same, I'm glad to have been given this item to review and to add my two cents.

*** I received this product for free from Orville Redenbacher's Canada via Influenster, but opinions expressed in this post are my own.*** #OrvilleCWC @OrvilleCanada +Influenster

Overpackaged Oreos

I was stunned the other day when I saw how many components go into an Oreo package now. When I was a child they had some cardboard and a plastic covered papery bag and that was it. I would have thought that packaging would have decreased over the intervening 30 years, but it has in fact increased. What a disappointment (and Oreos don't taste as good as they used to either- what a pity).

To their credit, there's not a lot of spare space in the bag or tray.

Oreos are now housed in a plastic tray, with cardboard layered under it (I have no idea why), and then a plastic bag around it.

The plastic bag, houses a plastic tray.

When the plastic tray is removed, one finds a slab of cardboard under it. Why is this needed?

This is a lot of packaging for cookies. Can't the company reduce the packaging somehow without compromising the integrity of the cookies?

Surely there's a simpler and less wasteful way of packaging a bag of cookies. The current packaging for Oreos by Nabisco (owned by Mondelez) uses more resources than are needed. This is another example of overpackaging.

Titanic Toothpaste Tube Housing is a Waste

Some products do not come in boxes. They are housed in their own package from which they are used and then a safety seal is placed over the opening of them to show that they have not been opened or used. Some examples would include certain brands of lipstick, eyeliner, mouthwash, drinks, etc. I am mystified as to why this isn't done with toothpaste.

My husband brought home two different types of toothpaste the other day. One was Sensodyne Multi-Action. The other was Crest 3D White Luxe. When we opened the boxes that housed the tubes of toothpaste, we were amazed by how much empty space there was inside the box.

When placing the tubes of toothpaste by the boxes that they were packaged in, one can see how much further waste is being created. Not only is the box a waste to begin with, but the larger than necessary box is further waste (and look at how colourful and fancy the boxes are, they're not just plain cardboard, so, again further resources wasted).  No one is going to reuse a toothpaste box, so this colourful marvel is going straight into the recycling box (at least it is recyclable), never to be used again.

Sensodyne Multi-Action:

This box is way too long for the tube of toothwaste. What a waste.

Crest 3D White Luxe:

This box isn't as long, but it's longer than necessary and wider than necessary.

I've read that there's an exception in packaging rules that allow manufacturers to package items that they think are vulnerable to shoplifting in larger than necessary packages, so perhaps that's how these manufacturers are justifying their very large and unnecessary boxes around tubes of toothpaste. I doubt toothpaste is a hot item for shoplifting, so this explanation doesn't work for me. I don't understand why a safety seal, either sticker or a bit of plastic around the neck wouldn't make a better, less wasteful packaging solution for tubes of toothpaste.

This is overpackaging.

Profuse Pomelo Packaging Strikes Again

My husband picked up a pomelo the other day at the grocery store and sure enough, it came packaged just like the last one I bought. We're not sure if this is some new trend, as we never used to see packaging on pomelos before, but it should stop. It's wasteful and unnecessary overpackaging that uses precious resources for no reason at all.

A pomelo is a citrus fruit that has a perfect package of its own. Its peel is thick and certainly doesn't need to be surrounded by a mesh net, plastic wrap, and a plastic ribbon (this one had pictures of fruit on it instead of pandas like in my last pomelo post).

The mesh net and ribbon are not recyclable as far as I can figure and will end up in the landfill.

This is heading to the landfill and it's not even necessary.

The plastic cling wrap, while one might throw it into a bag of old shopping bags and take it to a recycling facility, will probably be thrown out by most people and in any event is totally unnecessary.

Who knows what the purpose of this plastic cling wrap is.

 This is such a prime example of overpackaging, a package, around packaging, around fruit that has its own package.

All of this packaging for a single piece of fruit that's in its own package!

This beautiful and very large citrus (pomelos taste rather like a milder or sweeter grapefruit and are thought to be what grapefruits may have originated from) does not need this package. It is not fragile and vulnerable to squishing like a mandarin orange. Some of them you could probably break a window with they're so large and heavy, so I don't know how cling wrap and plastic mesh and ribbons are contributing to protecting them in transit or preserving them in the store.

The pomelo looks beautiful on its own, not wrapped in layers of wasteful plastic.

With a peel this thick there's no need for all that plastic.

Clearly, this is yet another example of overpackaging.

NeilMed NasoGel Nasal Spray has Needless Bulk

My husband bought a saline nasal spray to use on the airplane the other day. I opened the box of NeilMed NasoGel Spray so that he could pack the nasal spray and was astounded by all of the packaging.

Who would guess that inside this box there is a hermetically sealed bottle along with enough paper to create a piñata?

The nasal spray was not particularly big, perhaps a few inches high and an inch wide, but the box that it came in was much bigger. I don't even understand why it was in a box, because the nasal spray was completely sealed in plastic all the way around it's bottle and nozzle and cap.

So much extra space at the top of the box.

Why is this box so big?

Inside the box there was not one, but three enclosures. There was a big English pamphlet with various ads for the company's products, a French language ad pamphlet (these are both glossy and colourful and quite thick), and a sheet of coupons for other products made by the same company, but not a coupon for the product that one just purchased (so I would think less likely to be used).

Nasal spray, box, and a pile of different enclosures.

English and French versions of voluminous advertising and some coupons. All highly coloured and glossy.

Both ad books were this thick. Why is there so much paper?

I didn't get a shot of the plastic wrap that came off of of the bottle, because my husband took it off on the plane, but that's packaging too. Why was this item even put in a box? There is an exception that allows companies to use excessive packaging to prevent shoplifting, but honestly if everyone used that exception, the world would be filled to the brim with packaging, since criminals will steal whatever they have the will and desire to steal, regardless of size. NeilMed NasoGel Spray is definitely a prime example of overpackaging.

Plethoric Pomelo Packaging

I was at the grocery store the other day in the produce section. I noticed that pomelos are in season again. I was thrilled and bought one. It was only when I took it home that I noticed how complex and excessive the packaging around it was. First of all, for those who don't know what pomelos are, they're a citrus fruit from Asia that are related to grapefruit and taste sort of like a sweeter or milder grapefruit. As everyone knows, citrus fruits have their own natural package, a peel. So, they shouldn't need any package (I'm waiting for someone in the comments section to come up with some B.S. reason for this extra packaging that comes from the citrus distributors themselves and not from actual fact).

Despite its thick and protective peel (the thickness of a grapefruit peel), this pomelo was wrapped in a mesh net, with a fake leaf on top, and a plastic ribbon around with panda bears on it (something threatened with extinction and it's on something that using tons of resources and therefore threatening the environment how bizarre).

After I took the mesh net off with scissors, I found that the pomelo was wrapped in plastic wrap. Why?!

It was a package (peel) surrounded by a plastic package, surrounded by a mesh net package, surrounded by plastic ribbon with a fake leaf on top.

This is a crazy amount of packaging for just one piece of fruit that already comes in a package. I should also point out that other than the plastic wrap which could be recycled with shopping bags, none of the packaging was recyclable so it will be going to the landfill (other than the citrus peel, which is of course compost).

What will we see next? Bananas in plastic wrap and bags? This is a prime example of overpackaging.

Misleading Doritos

I bought a bag of Doritos the other day. The front of the bag said 25 grams more. It certainly looked like a very big bag of Doritos.

The bag looks gigantic, but those who are expecting a ton of Doritos will be disappointed when they open the bag.

But when I opened the bag, it was only half full.

This is not the bag after I had a snack attack. This is what it looked like when I opened it. What a waste of packaging!

The fill line is where my thumb is. So what's the point of the other half of the bag? Do we just want extra garbage for the landfill (after all this package is not even recyclable)?

Why do companies like Frito-Lay (who makes Doritos), insist on using giant packages and only filling them part way? They would save money if they used packages that fit the amount of product being sold, instead of something much bigger than is needed. I know that they think that they're fooling us into buying things by making them look bigger than they are, but once the consumer opens the package and sees that they've been shortchanged and duped, they're going to be annoyed (and you know the saying, fool me once . . .) . So why don't these companies just use less packaging and therefore less resources. The way things are now, we're just all annoyed by companies thinking that consumers are idiots and by the overpackaging that's going on in the world.

New Smarties Packaging is Not So Smart

Yesterday I was at the movies with my mother and we bought a box of Smarties to share. In the darkened movie theatre, we looked at the box of Smarties. "Is this smaller than the boxes used to be?" I asked. "Yes of course it is. Everything is smaller now," my mother replied. She had a point. Pretty much everything is smaller now and more expensive.

Who knew that I was supposed to open the package from the right end and not the left end.

I opened the box and we were both mystified to see that the Smarties were sectioned into three tubes within the box. The sectioning was achieved by extra pieces of cardboard within the box. We could not understand why this was. "Look it's not even full," my mother pointed out. But nothing ever really is (think of that last bag of chips or box of cereal you bought- it wasn't full). This box was only filled to about 3/4 full with Smarties in their three little sections. We had no idea how you would eat the Smarties. Being in three sections would make the Smarties go everywhere if you tried to tip them into your hand. So, we did what my parents always do at the movies and tipped the whole box into the bag of popcorn.

Extra cardboard creates three individual sections for the Smarties to sit in.

I took the box with me home so that I could get a photo of it and that's when I discovered the purpose of the three sections. Turns out that we had opened the box at the wrong end.

Or eat them all at once. I don't need some guilt trip or directive from a package, thank you very much.

The box said "make 'em last." Yeah, right. I don't know anyone who would buy a regular sized box of Smarties and then save them through three different sittings. Sure the calorie content for each section was clearly set out on the box, but who wants to eat just 10 Smarties or so at a time? It's unrealistic and in the process the company has used even more resources in their packaging, ie. extra cardboard.

Door number one.

Door number two.

All three doors open.

I think that this calorie counting packaging experiment should be abandoned by Smarties. I mean at least 50% of people are going to open the package from the wrong end either through inattention or from not being able to see that there is a particular end to open (badly lit movie theatres, lost reading glasses, whatever) and those that do open the package from the right end are most likely just going to eat them all in one go anyways, so it seems like just a waste of packaging. It's overpackaging.

Sheet Sets- Why Do They Always Have So Much Packaging?

Last month, we bought two new sets of sheets to replace our sheets that had aged to the point of becoming holey. Both sheet sets that we bought from Winners came in very wasteful packaging.

Both sheet sets had a thick plastic package, with a paper insert with the name of the sheet set on it, and then a built in zipper (so mixed materials, plastic, paper, and metal, almost impossible to recycle).One sheet set even had a ribbon around it.

Inside the sheets were wrapped around cardboard. The cardboard definitely should not have been necessary. Almost everyone who buys a sheet set will immediately tear the sheets out and wash them before using them, so there's no point in them being preserved in perfect rigid order in a store. They're just going to come out of the dryer all wrinkled anyways.

This set of sheets came in a mixed plastic, paper, and metal zippered bag.

This sheet was wrapped around cardboard and wrapped in a ribbon. This whole packaged was placed in the plastic, metal zippered, and paper labeled bag.

A large piece of cardboard, paper, plastic, metal zipper, and ribbon as packaging for this set of sheets.

This set of sheets was also enclosed in a plastic, metal zippered, and paper labeled bag.

This set of sheets was also wrapped around a large piece of cardboard.

Why not just wrap the sheet set in some thin plastic wrap with perhaps a paper label or sticker? I have seen sheets before that come in a little cotton sack, instead of a plastic zippered bag, but I would argue that this is probably pointless too for who will use the cotton sack again?

Why does there always have to be so much packaging with sheet sets? It's just going to be thrown out. Who is going to use the cheap plastic zippered bag for something else? How many people are going to tear apart the different components and recycle them? Are all the parts even recyclable? The packaging is wasteful and pointless and almost every company that manufactures and sells sheet sets seems to use the same packaging. Why are we using so many resources to package one sheet set? It's definitely overpackaging.

Sephora's Lashstash 2016

The packaging for this year's "Lashstash" from Sephora, that includes ten mascaras (eight sample size and two full size) is less elaborate than some of the previous years, but still very, very bulky. Why does the box have to be over a foot long (12.5 inches x 7 inches x 2 inches or 32 cm x 18 cm x 5 cm)? The ten mascaras (eight of which are only sample sized and therefore about the half the size of a regular full size mascara) could easily fit into quite a small box. This giant box is made out of holographic cardboard with highly coloured printing on it, so it must have taken a fair bit of resources to create it. I'm not saying don't make it look nice at all, just perhaps make it more compact, so as to waste less resources so there will be some left in the future for the next generation.

In addition, the packaging is mixed materials. The box is lined with a plastic insert that the mascaras are slotted into. This makes recycling more challenging (and it's hard to pry the mascaras out of the plastic insert too). Recycling should be easy so that as many people as possible will do it.

Behold it in all of its holographic beauty (12.5 inches x 7 inches x 2 inches).

Eight sample and two full sized mascaras in a giant mixed materials box.

The different types of mascara in the box are listed on the box.

I love that they call it a "wardrobe of ten mascaras."

The mascaras are housed in a huge cardboard box with a plastic insert into which the mascaras are wedged.

Closeup of the individual mascaras.

And of course all of the mascaras have mixed materials in their packaging, making them more difficult to recycle too (plastic and metal and in some case some sort of rubber material on brushes).

While my sister and I love trying out the different mascaras every year from Sephora's "Lashstash," the packaging is definitely overkill and can't help but make one feel like ever more of a wasteful consumer. I would love to see the size of the packaging go down in future years, not remain the same or grow. And I don't see why a plastic insert is necessary in the box. Maybe Sephora could get "Lashstash" 2017 into under a foot long box?