It never fails to impress me when I see a manufacturer who marks all packaging with recycle marks, and (and here is the bit where most fail) make it very easy to recycle the packaging. Ikea is an example of how it should be done: easily marked materials; different types of materials are not mixed up in a jumble of sticky glue; and the packaging is minimal.
I have an entire room in the house dedicated to the packaging provided with the items I’ve procured during the renovation along with all the materials we have ripped out and cannot reuse. I’m guessing that 50% of the pile is very easily recyclable - its easy to take apart and to stack in common piles (cardboard, plastics, metals, wood etc). The rest is recyclable, but it is difficult to do.
The nightmare is the legacy items left in the place when we moved in and some newer items we have bought to make the house livable. Most of the furniture has been passed on to places that recycle/repair the items for community reuse; some items have been burnt (as they was crawling - literally); and the rest is in the room.
I’m going through them now and the bit that annoyed me the most was a spatula. Yea I know, a lot of people have a love/hate thing for spatula’s, but in this case its the packaging. We bought it over the web and for all I care I’ve eaten the product marketing and now just want the product. Instead of a simple brown box, or similar, it comes to me in full retail packaging - plastic cover, card backing, lots of printing, a few stickers and those damn nasty wire ties used to keep them in the box. What a waste of resources, both theirs and mine (stripping each item of the packaging apart for recycling). Why don’t manufacturer’s have an ‘OEM’ style option for internet orders where retail packaging doesn’t apply? If nothing else wouldn’t mind saving a little bit of the cost associated with this packaging.
Things are progressing quickly with the Kitchen. The rubberwood worktops are being installed in the kitchen and this somehow seems to have made the kitchen look complete. It’s a shame that the worktops have been sat in the transit for over a month as they have slightly warped. Thankfully our chippy (well the old man) is more than a match for warped wood.