last night for dinner i made a soup from thai kitchen, the roasted garlic noodle bowl. it came packaged in a plastic bowl. wrapped in plastic wrap. with a cardboard band around it. the whole thing was wrapped in plastic again. i peeled off these layers and opened the lid for the soup. inside there were three different spice and seasoning packets. one of them (the sesame oil) was packaged in two layers of plastic. then those three bags were pakaged in another layer of plastic. you were to empty the packets into the bowl and pour boiling water 'to the lowest ridge on the plastic bowl provided' , put the cover back and let it sit for three minutes. voila! soup.

i can't seem to figure out why this soup needed so many layers of packaging? the spices could've been in one bag. shit, they could've just been in the bowl with the noodles. the bowl had a LID that was SEALED. why did it need to be shrink wrapped? why not put the label on a stikcer? you could cut what is now 9 pieces of packaging to 2!

no wonder we have full landfills. i usually pay attention to that kind of thing - the amount of packaging - but i didn't realize it until i got home. the soup was good, yes. but companies need to pay more attention to that. consumers have to be aware of the benefits of less packaging. hey, you can tell people who bitch that at least they won't have to take the trash out as often. it's a little thing, really, but added up even in just one household over a year it would be significant. i wish we paid a 'real cost' for our trash collection, the more you consume, the more you throw away, the more you pay. here in sacto, you can get a smaller can. but you only pay $3 less a month. for a tiny can compared to the mammoth 'regular' ones....from the soapbox, that was alissa.