Packing it in

The good and the bad. (Clockwise from top left) Speights crate, Kokako drinking chocolate, Wishbone bike, Sealord deli menu, Oral Braun toothbrush heads, Bag in meat tray.

The best things come in small packages, they say. Gina Dempster says the important thing is that the packaging is small.

And with this message the Wanaka Wastebusters - for which Dempster works - are driving up the country encouraging people to wrap less, and vote in their Unpackit 2011 Packaging Awards.

The first rule of good packaging is keeping it to a minimum.

"You obviously don't want to spend more resources packaging something than you need to," Ms Dempsters says.

Any other approach is wasteful, outdated thinking, and only consumes more resources getting rid of stuff that can't be recycled, she says.

This leads to the second rule.

"The second rule of good packaging is that it needs to be recyclable or home compostable," she says.

"When you look at the New Zealand businesses that are in the finalists... they all showed that packaging is changing for the better. They were all thinking of packaging as part of their product. So their packaging really extends their product and is a real positive for their product," Ms Dempster says of the Unpackit nominees for best packaging.

"Then I think there is another kind of a trend that is reflected in the worst, which were all the big multinational companies, where they think convenience is the way to go and convenience is somehow being linked to disposability. So you are getting the rise of the multi-chip multi-packs where you buy one big packet of chips and you get a whole lot of little packets of chips."

Ms Dempster thinks those companies are out of touch with consumers, but says there seems to be more of that kind of packaging around.

Classic examples of good packaging include the Speights crate and the egg carton. On the other side of the ledger, the wastebusters are shaking their collective heads at the individually wrapped prune.

"I don't know whose bright idea it is to individually wrap Sunsweet's prunes, but I haven't met one person on the roadtrip so far who doesn't think that it is ridiculous."

There have been attempts to address these issues on a national scale, but the Packaging Accord, a voluntary effort, ended in 2009.

"Some progress was made with packaging but it was not enough. And I think, when you have a voluntary agreement that's always the problem, that people ... find there's not much incentive to get a lot of action when it is voluntary," Ms Dempster says.

Cadbury, a member of the Packaging Council of NZ, has had one of its products nominated in the bad packaging section this year.

A spokeswoman for the company said last year about 90% of the total packaging tonnes used for Cadbury products were able to be recycled.

"In relation to Cadbury Drinking Chocolate, the supplier of the pack recently conducted a successful trial in conjunction with a material recycling facility and it is anticipated that the pack will soon carry a recycling symbol to encourage consumers to recycle where possible," she said.

The Packaging Council of NZ has its own environmental packaging awards, which are open for nominations until May 31. Go to www.packaging.org.nz.

• Voting
You can vote in the Unpackit packaging awards at www.unpackit.org.nz.