Tassimo, Tassimo Pods

While at my cousin's house the other day, I noticed that he had purchased a Tassimo machine. Now, these fancy contraptions are for those people who are time-starved, and only want to make one perfect cup of a beverage, whether it is coffee or tea. Holy waste, batman! Making a perfect cup involves pouring in water into the machine, as well as placing a coffee/tea disc (there are options for organic and fair trade coffees and teas) into the machine and your "one perfect cup" is made. However, the coffee/tea disc is made of plastic as well as containing a layer of foil on top - and there is no possibility to recycle these discs.

My assumed rationale behind this amount of packaging: For the pods, likely it is convenience, the nicety of having a gadget, and keeping the tea or coffee "fresh". There is a certain futuristic Jetsons feel to it also.

Alternative considerations: Whatever happened to just boiling a bit of water in a kettle and just using a conventional tea bag, or even instant coffee?

The Tassimo discs are made by Kraft, contact Tassimo here:

Email Tassimo US here.
Email Tassimo Canadahere
Call Tassimo US and Canada here, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week: 1-877-TDISCS1 (1-877-834-7271)

Convenient tuna snacks

Convenience usually means delivering a product to a consumer in the least amount of time in the cleanest and freshest way possible. However, what this usually translates into is a whole lot of packaging waste. While in the past, so-called convenient food involved only "unhealthy" snacks like chips and milk chocolate, lately they've included a host of healthy options, such as these portable protein tuna snacks: Clover Leaf Tuna Salad (Canada), Oceans Snackits (Canada) and Starkist Lunch to Go (US). While it can be applauded that these products are offering a healthier option versus many of their convenience counterparts, most of these tuna snack products are entombed in plastic unnecessarily.

What is included in the tuna kit? On the outside is a clamshell type plastic container, a small tin can of tuna, crackers wrapped in cellophane, a spreading stick (wrapped in plastic), as well as an optional napkin.







My assumed rationale behind the amount of packaging: To keep all the components fresh - crackers should be crisp, tuna should be fresh. Crackers shouldn't be crushed. The front panel should also allow for merchandising. Everything inside should allow for convenience and should be low on cost.

Alternative considerations: Because of the small size of the serving, it is unlikely that tuna snacks would require a resealable package. (Where would one store the tuna and crackers, if they were not finished? You'd need separate containers) Therefore, the large plastic container that is resealable is unnecessary. I like the Clover Leaf package, that is a plastic tray with a cardboard top, which would biodegrade faster and creates much less plastic waste. The cardboard top also serves as the merchandising surface, while in the Oceans Snackit and Gold Seal Tuna Snacks there is a separate piece of cardboard inside the plastic container that acts as the merchandising surface. Keep in mind also, that in "convenience" situations, there aren't a lot of facilities for recycling products, so I believe the Clover Leaf package is superior. Lastly - is it necessary to cover the spreading stick in plastic?


What can you do? Leave some comments. Or, write to some of the manufacturers whose tuna kits are unnecessarily packaged:

Ocean Fisheries Ltd.
Sales and Marketing Division
13140 Rice Mill Road
Richmond BC, Canada
V6W 1A1
Phone: 604-272-2552
Fax 604-272-5933
Email: talktous@oceanfish.com


Gold Seal Head Office
Foot of Gore Avenue
Vancouver, BC
V6A 2Y7
Canada
Phone: 604.681.0211
Email: feedback@goldseal.ca

Starkist tuna in the US can be contacted here.

Campbells Select, Campbells Soup at Hand

Campbell's soup to me, has always been a staple in North America. The chicken noodle and tomato alphabet soups have served as many a cold fall and winter evening as comfort food. The broth has been a base to many a carrot-squash soup. My favourite artist, Andy Warhol, even epitomized Campbell's soup cans in many of his silkscreen prints.

However, within the last two years, Campbell's has come out with some "convenience" oriented products that are portable and easily heated in the microwave. One such item is Soup At Hand. This was a particularly good idea because of the growth of the convenience market as well as the lack of healthy offerings in this market. Similarly, soup is a common lunch food that can't be eaten in the car so easily. (Spilling hot soup on to lap in traffic = not so fun.) Lastly, the lid for this soup is small enough so that it doesn't spill all over your car, it is large enough so that all the soup fillings (noodles, vegetables) don't get stuck, and the overall container is a perfect fit into a cup holder and fits the contour of your hand.

So then, where can Campbells improve this product? Although the container is a #2 plastic that can be recycled, the container seems like an awful lot of plastic for such a small amount of soup, and cannot be reused or reheated.

My assumed rationale behind the amount of packaging: The plastic is most likely very thick so that consumers do not burn themselves.
Alternative considerations: Create a refillable and reheatable container that can be fillled with soup from a Campbells Tetrapack.

Campbell's Soup can be written to here.

Sandisk Memory Products

In the digital age, we have tons of new gadgets - cameras, cell phones, mp3 players, you name it. As you've noticed, digital music and photos take up a honking large amount of memory! Thankfully, Sandisk swooped in to provide a lot of high quality flash drive and memory products. I've used their products for my music sampler as well as my digital camera. However, picking up their products in stores, I have been dismayed to find that their products are packaged in a plastic clamshell box about 20 times the size of the actual product.

My assumed rationale behind all this plastic: theft prevention, larger "face" to merchandise with

Alternative considerations: Retailers could consider putting an anti- theft device on the product instead of compensating by package size.

SanDisk can be contacted using one of these methods. Let them know what you think about their excessive packaging.