<
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/feb/21/majority-of-household-appliances-packaged-in-unsustainable-material-choice-says>
"The majority of the country’s most popular appliances are being packaged in
unsustainable materials, a review by Choice has found, prompting the consumer
rights group to call for an urgent overhaul of how brands box their products.
Comparing the packaging of 38 kettles, air fryers and stick vacuums across
different household brands Choice found while some manufacturers are using
recyclable cardboard and fibre to package their products, others are using
unstable materials such as landfill-bound polystyrene.
The Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation has set an ambitious goal to
make all packaging recyclable, reusable or compostable by 2025. Australia will
fail to meet this if companies do not switch to sustainable alternatives soon
and gaps in consumer understanding are not addressed, according to Choice.
A Choice journalist, Andy Kollmorgen, said only half of the packaging (55%) was
getting recycled or reused, with some manufacturers doing “markedly better”
than others.
“Some did better than others – Black+Decker, Anko and Philips are all pretty
good. And then others did less well – Tefal, Sunbeam, Kambrook, Breville – all
not great.”
None of the boxes in the evaluation were free of plastic packaging components –
with 30 of the 38 products using soft plastics compatible with the REDcycle
scheme, which is now on hold.
The best products were the Black+Decker Power Series Extreme stick vacuum
(which had 100% recycled packaging, including three REDcycle components),
followed by the Beko PowerClean Pro stick vacuum (96%) and the Dyson V8 and V12
Detect Slim Absolute stick vacuums (both 95%).
The worst products were reported to be the Dreame Cordless Vacuum T30 stick
vacuum (30%), the Cuisinart Multi-temp cordless kettle (38%) and then the Shark
Cordless Apex Pro Pet Vacuum (39%)."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
