Pomelos: Fruit in a Package Doesn’t Need Packaging

A fruit with a package (a thick peel) next to all of this unnecessary packaging,  a plastic bag, shrink wrap, a plastic ribbon.

I have blogged about packaging on fruit before (Dole bananas- see link here and pomelos more than once- see link here and link here), but I feel compelled to do it again. Some fruit probably needs some kind of packaging (example berries would fall all over the place if they didn’t have some kind of a little box), but fruit with its own package like bananas and citrus fruit, like pomelos, definitely does not need a package.

For some reason, pomelos seem to get ornate packaging every now and then (other times there is no packaging and this is great). I’m not sure if this packaging is because they are sometimes given as a gift, but they really don’t need all of this packaging.

The pomelo that my husband came home with from the grocery store the other day was incredibly overpackaged. It was housed in a plastic bag, a plastic ribbon, and plastic shrink wrap too. This is ridiculous since pomelos have a very thick peel (they taste like a mild, slightly sweeter grapefruit).

The pomelos were being sold in the grocery store like this.

"We use high-quality raw material for our goods. This is the best gifts for best Friends." That's what it said on the plastic bag that the pomelo came in.

A fruit with a package next to a plastic bag, plastic shrink wrap, and a plastic ribbon.

A peel of a pomelo can compost, but all of this garbage cannot and it’s totally unnecessary. I wish packaging of packaged fruit would just cease. Producing more stuff for landfills will make finding places to grow fruits and vegetables even more difficult. Overpackaging of organics is odious.

Cookies with Kooky Packaging

I previously wrote a post about Oreo Cookies because they had not only a plastic outer package, but also a plastic tray and cardboard inside (you can find the post here). Since then, I’ve noticed Oreos in the store in a much smaller package, so it seems they’ve changed packaging and I applaud Nabisco and Mondelez for that. Unfortunately, the world of cookies with plastic trays in addition to outer packaging is still well populated.

Here are two types of cookies I’ve discovered recently and they both have boxes, plastic wrap, and plastic trays (and not as many cookies in the box as one would think from looking at the box on the shelf!).

LeClerc Celebration Milk Chocolate Butter Cookies
By the time I took these photos, we had eaten almost all of the cookies, but I can tell you that each of the six sections of the plastic tray that are different shapes for some reason (the cookies are all the same rectangular shape) holds three cookies exactly. That means a box has precisely 18 cookies. This seems like a surprisingly small amount for the size of the box and the tray. The cookies are not that large or thick. They’re really good cookies, kind of like a digestive or butter cookie covered in a layer of really good chocolate. But I am disappointed in the packaging. After finishing the cookies, we were left with plastic wrap, a plastic tray, and a cardboard box. The plastic tray and cardboard box are easy to recycle, but one must remember that reducing is better than recycling. It takes energy and resources to recycle. It’s better to just not produce all this unnecessary packaging. There has to be a better way to package these fine cookies.

From the box, one would hope for more than 18 cookies. Who knows what 240 grams means.

This is two cookies sitting in the tray (there are normally three in each of the six sections. The packaging seems like overkill.

I can't understand the different shapes in the tray either. All the cookies look like the this.

So much waste left after the 18 cookies are gone.

Dare Coconut Whippet Sticks
These cookies are interesting. They are like a tiny log of biscuit, a pile of coconut on top, and then a nice covering of good chocolate. They taste rather like mini Bounty chocolate bars. The packaging for these is even more wasteful than the cookies above. These are tiny little logs of chocolaty coconutty goodness, but they only put two into each section of this big plastic tray. The tray is wrapped in plastic. And they are in a larger than needed cardboard box. There are ten cookie retaining areas on the overly large tray, which means that exactly 20 little sticks come in each box. If one just threw these little sticks into a box without the tray, the box would be mostly empty. I’m sure there’s a better way to package these nice little coconut sticks without using so many materials. As above, I could recycle the plastic tray and cardboard box (but not the plastic wrap), but it would be better if unnecessary packaging was eliminated. Recycling takes a lot of energy and resources as well as producing these throwaway materials in the first place.

Spoiler, the cookies are not this big and 250 grams means you get just 20.

Cardboard, plastic wrap, and plastic tray make up the packaging for these little cookies.

Each plastic tray section holds exactly two of these little sticks. There are ten sections in this big plastic tray.

20 tiny sticks and you're left with all of this waste.

In conclusion, I enjoyed both of these types of cookies, but I really dislike how they are packaged. I hope that LeClerc and Dare will reconsider how they package these cookies and make the packaging less voluminous and wasteful. I want to eat cookies without feeling guilty about how much waste I'm creating for the landfill and the recycling depot. Ending overpackaging of cookies would make them all the more sweet.

Wasteful Packaging: Knorr Selects Spinach & Artichoke Rice Sample from Well.ca

In mid August, I placed an order with Well.ca, a Canadian online shopping site that has many interesting products including food, vitamins, protein bars, a wide range of baby products, kitchen implements, etc.. I’ve been very pleased with the website so far (their customer service is excellent too), however, there is one aspect of ordering products from them that makes me a little annoyed. When one places an order, depending on how much one has spent, certain samples are offered. One does have the right to refuse the samples, but in this case, I took the sample offered which was a Knorr Selects Spinach & Artichoke Rice side dish.  I was pretty sure I wouldn’t like the dish, but it was free, and with a new baby in the house, a “10 minute” food item sounded like good emergency backup.

I received my order from Well.ca and found the sample. It was packed in plastic (Why? The packet the Knorr side dish comes in is very thick and foil lined with a plasticy sort of outer shell). This is not the first time I’ve received samples from Well.ca that have been overpackaged (one notable example was a Dare REALFRUIT Biscuit Strawberry with Yoghurt sample which was this little fruit bar that was wrapped in cardboard, had a paper coupon, and then a plastic wrapper around all of that). 

The Knorr sample came in a plastic package.

Upon opening the plastic wrap last night (in a fit of desperation of what to eat late at night after finally getting a fussy baby to sleep), I found not just this thick package, but also two different paper inserts. One of them was a large piece of paper with something about entering a contest for a $100 gift card (it didn’t specify what the gift card was for- I mean is it for Knorr products or something more general.  If it’s for Knorr side dishes, I doubt many people will waste the time entering- I certainly don’t have time) and the other was a coupon for more of this Knorr stuff.

When I opened the plastic package there was all of this inside.

My husband and I cooked up this monstrosity last night. The smell of the dry stuff was gross and it was even worse prepared. We tried to improve it by putting some fresh grated parmesan on top and lots of pepper and some salt, but it was unsalvageable and after a few bites we couldn’t eat anymore. Plus, if you’re looking for a 10 minute preparation time, look again. One actually has to bring it to a boil first, then time 10 minutes, then turn off the heat and wait at least another 5 minutes to let it thicken. Anyways, I generally don’t like packaged food and this certainly didn’t make me want to try anything by Knorr again. Bluck!

And Knorr should stop using so much packaging for a sample. This creates an incredible amount of waste. It’s unnecessary. My child’s generation is going to having nothing left but a pile of garbage if companies keep using so much wasteful packaging for all of their products including free samples. Well.ca, being a company focussed on wellness, should perhaps put some pressure on the companies that are sending samples to them to distribute to use less packaging for the “wellness” of the planet.

Overpackaging impacts us all. Now I’m left with a plastic wrapper, empty package, and two pieces of paper, all of which I will never use again and some of which I can’t even recycle.

So much waste. 

Frito-Lay Twistos: Why Does a Coupon Need a Plastic Bag Around It?

When ordering a baby gym from Toys “R” Us last week, we received a couple of coupons in the box when it was delivered to our house. One of them was for a snack called “Twistos” from Frito-Lay.

Is this coupon so precious that it needs to be hermetically sealed in plastic?

Why is this coupon so heavily guarded?

What confused me was why a coupon that came in a cardboard box would need a plastic bag around it. What a waste. How many coupons did Frito-Lay print? And then to wrap each coupon in plastic is an added waste, especially if they don’t get used. I won’t be using mine and unfortunately, it’s just more plastic for the garbage and more paper for the recycling bin. What ridiculous overpackaging, Frito-Lay. Coupons don’t need a plastic bag around them.

Not one, but two pieces of paper in the plastic.

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.

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.

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.