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I just got a Braun Sonic Razor (short word on that: awesome!) And it came with eough spurious material to make half another razor. I understand the sales imperitave but when it comes to the innards, hey, I ALREADY BOUGHT the damn thing! Given that its green week (which means the lead on Journeyman is caught in the act of *gasp!* recycling) I am pushing again for reanalysis of our materials use and priorities.
I have one dream that can change the way we consume things on earth: discover the Asian secrets of bamboo and rice paper. Rice grows constantly and given the abndance of farmland in the US and the scarcity of lumber, why not convert idling grain fields to rice producing paper mills?
Also, Bamboo is a great substitute for steel and grows like weeds. In India and other asian countries they use it instead of rebar for apartment buildings. Almost everything, from lamps to furniture, can use Bamboo instead of metals; we will of course need to move away from mechanized production (or make some real super robots), but we can drastically reduce the amount of mining we do if we swap natural materials for minerals. My mom planted a bamboo hedge in her front lawn and with almost no effort ended up with cords of bamboo, more than she knew what to do with; the biggest problem is not keeping it alive (as long as the climate is wet) but keeping it from spreading.
Finally, why are we still using styrofoam? its high time we learned to love pulp byproduct for packaging. Most cheap electronic components use recycled stamped form-fit paper for internal packing where most other companies use paper or plastic for "Beauty queen" mounting of products inside boxes.
Video games used to come in size-hogging boxes as big as a dictionary; the industry moved to much less wasteful DVD-sized packaging and guess what? People are still buying video games.
I would love for other industries to forego their fascination for wasteful, environmentally hogging package crap and start going "less is more" with their products. Put your manuals online and stamp the basic instructions INSIDE THE PACKAGE. If they really want the full on manual, give them a post card and/or a web form and mail it to them; what you spend in postange you'll save many times over in material savings.
Or best of all, design your packages so that they can be unfolded inside out and mailed back to you; I think you'd be surprised how many people pay the postage just to avoid the waste, and are willing to buy a product in a used box for the same reason.
Similarly, soda can makers: with a little ingenuity, you can turn your one-use cans into a reusable cup, one that I can use for discounted refills at the soda fountain OR a general purpose water bottle. I'd easily pay twice the cost for a can like that (or more if it came with a refil pip or two). And of course, I can't help thinking that a bamboo stalk would make a nifty soda container...
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