Moaning packaging

Time for a moan about packaging, about three over-packagings to be precise.

My first is Elastoplast, in particular the ready-cut strips intended for use on cuts on the ends of one's fingers, the sort of thing that happens when one is, for example, gardening. So one comes in from the garden to a long fight with the cunning packaging of the ready-cut strip, during which fight one's not very clean fingers get all over the so carefully sterilised surface of the dressing. Much easier when the stuff came on rolls and one just snipped off a couple of inches.

My second is peanut butter, the sort that comes to us under the aegis of a once Finnish outfit called Kallø, this despite the absence of peanuts in Finland and their presence in the US. In mitigation they can say they are not actually Finnish any more, rather just one of the Royal Wessanen brands, Royal Wessanen being a large health food outfit from the Netherlands. Who knows. Fortunately, for present purposes, that is all beside the point, the problem being that when you remove the screw top lid from your brand new jar of Whole Earth, smooth and original delicious peanut butter (I don't approve of lumps), you are confronted by a foil seal which you have to remove to get at the peanut butter, a removal which, unless you are lucky enough to peel the thing off in one piece, suffers from the same sort of problems as the Elastoplast. A device intended for our hygiene actually results in a lot of un-hygiene.

My third is Ribena, the one and only original, chock full of Vitamin C and glucose syrup. No competition at all really, with the few substitutes that I have come across being far inferior. Far inferior that is, when you succeed in getting the thin foil wrapper off the top of the plastic bottle, this last, sadly, not being original at all. I have never succeeded in getting the foil wrapper off in one piece and so, not liking to have scraps of foil scattered around the neck of the bottle, I am reduced to scraping the stuff off with a small kitchen knife. A third case of a device intended for our hygiene actually resulting in a lot of un-hygiene.

And when I have cracked the foil problem, it usually takes me some seconds to work out the next step, to notice that there is a finger loop hidden inside the neck of the bottle which I can use to pull the seal.

And while I am at it, I might also complain about the cunning plastic bags with complex seals used to hold dry goods like lentils and raisins. One is supposed to open the seal in some non-destructive way, pour out however much of the stuff inside that one wants, and then to reseal the bag. But it is only very occasionally that I manage to open one of these seals in a way which allows me to pour without spilling some part of the contents all over the kitchen table, never mind resealing the thing.