The Madness of Packaging
I live in the university town of Cambridge where exams are drawing to a close. I went out to purchase a lunchtime sandwich, fully aware that the majority of the filling would end up residing in my capacious keyboard. I am convinced the more I feed it the smoother the typing, like a well oiled engine. I dare not turn it upside down.
I noticed a group of students with shopping trolleys, covertly herded out of the confines of a supermarket. The first chariot was crammed with plastic punnets of strawberries (about two per carton), the second with sugar, cream and Champagne. They were locked in a Ben-Hur type tussle. The sun was out, so punting on the river Cam was most probably their objective. Very civilised. I hoped that the beautiful river would not suffer the normal watery grave of shopping trolleys.
There is a lot in the media about over packaging, this being a prime example. There was enough plastic around those poor sweaty strawberries to create a G-Wiz electric car.
Bottle packaging is more interesting. If those students chose to recycle just two from their Moet nest, they would save enough energy to boil five cups of tea.
Apparently the foil around the top of a wine bottle used to be made out of lead (banned in 1993). This is why sommeliers wiped the top of a bottle before pouring to avoid poisoning.
A victim of wine drinking plumbism was Beethoven. Unfortunately for him bottles had lead foils, lead acetate was used to sweeten wine (some might say the cause of the decline of the Roman Empire) and he enjoyed drinking copious amounts from his favourite lead goblet. The genius had numerous 'heavy metal' related health complaints, including deafness and died early at 57 in 1827. I guess the odds were stacked against him.
A good tip for wine pouring is to cut the foil low so as to avoid giving the wine a metallic tang. Years ago, a foils purpose was to prevent weevils and rodents attacking the corks in damp dusky wine cellars. Now, like so much packaging, aesthetics are the name of the game.
I noticed a group of students with shopping trolleys, covertly herded out of the confines of a supermarket. The first chariot was crammed with plastic punnets of strawberries (about two per carton), the second with sugar, cream and Champagne. They were locked in a Ben-Hur type tussle. The sun was out, so punting on the river Cam was most probably their objective. Very civilised. I hoped that the beautiful river would not suffer the normal watery grave of shopping trolleys.
There is a lot in the media about over packaging, this being a prime example. There was enough plastic around those poor sweaty strawberries to create a G-Wiz electric car.
Bottle packaging is more interesting. If those students chose to recycle just two from their Moet nest, they would save enough energy to boil five cups of tea.
Apparently the foil around the top of a wine bottle used to be made out of lead (banned in 1993). This is why sommeliers wiped the top of a bottle before pouring to avoid poisoning.
A victim of wine drinking plumbism was Beethoven. Unfortunately for him bottles had lead foils, lead acetate was used to sweeten wine (some might say the cause of the decline of the Roman Empire) and he enjoyed drinking copious amounts from his favourite lead goblet. The genius had numerous 'heavy metal' related health complaints, including deafness and died early at 57 in 1827. I guess the odds were stacked against him.
A good tip for wine pouring is to cut the foil low so as to avoid giving the wine a metallic tang. Years ago, a foils purpose was to prevent weevils and rodents attacking the corks in damp dusky wine cellars. Now, like so much packaging, aesthetics are the name of the game.
1 Comments:
Pesky purportless packaging! That's a windmill we all need to joust at more regularly. And you can blame us pesky Americans, more's the pity.
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