Little Jimmy was so excited because the package finally arrived. It was his 10th birthday. When he looked at the huge box he imagined it containing a soccer ball, a football, and a baseball! Or maybe it was the rocking horse he saw at the store. But when he opened it and dug through 3 sheets of bubble wrap, millions of pieces of Styrofoam and found a cardboard and cellophane package of pencils, he was so outraged. And so am I but not because of the pencils because of the waste!! We need to do something about too much packaging.


First of all we create too much garbage with the unused packaging. According to the consumer reports senior editor Mandy Walker, the cardboard boxes used for shipping makes up 1/3 of the U.S. solid waste. I do agree that there are some breakable products that are need extra packaging, but that’s outrageous they aren't that breakable. Imagine that we use over 10 tons of packaging when we could at least be cutting down at least a few tons.


That brings me to my next topic, cutting down on packaging. According to the Environmental Defense Fund if we cut down the use of packaging to 100 tons to 90 tons we can save more than 5,372 pounds of waste, 20,000 gallons of waste water and more than 34,000 pounds of CO2 equivalent. That makes a big difference. And yes I do agree that some people don’t recycle their cardboard boxes because they reuse them, but can’t they recycle their boxes after they are done with them. Other than that when we reuse them too much and the boxes rip they just throw them away!! What I am saying is that recycling or cutting down is not such a pain in the rear it actually makes things better.


Finally cutting down on packaging actually saves companies money!! According to the packaging expert at Consumer Reports, companies can save money if they buy the same size box for every product they ship. Anyway most products people but over the Internet are pretty small therefor the company that is shipping that product can just buy the same size box for that product. Also if the product is too small like for example lip balm, they can just send the lip balm in an envelope. No box, no bubble wrap and NO Styrofoam needed just the product and the receipt.


As a final point we should require people to recycle the packaging. Or just at least have the companies cut back. We can have a cleaner environment, save money, and even have less solid waste. I say we cut down on packaging as soon as possible for the good of the world.