Packaging has become a frustrating farce

This is a ridiculous story about how idiotic current packaging has become. Recently I came home with a package of pad locks. It was a nice display in clear plastic so you could see all angles of the items. Although, upon consideration about how to open that packaging it became obvious that it was not meant to be opened by some simple house holder. Someone who might have some arthritic pain or other weaknesses in the wrists or upper torso, in vision, dexterity or balance.

There was no opening point. The items had been placed in the packaging and then the plastic had been molded shut so there could be no entry except by extraordinary and dangerous means.

The packaging was of incredibly hard, thick plastic that had no intention to yield to simple scissors. The kitchen paring knife couldn’t penetrate using moderate strength or even a sawing motion. Although the blade bent enough to instil the vision of missing fingers, unsightly gashes or severed blood vessels.

So, I opted for a utility knife and immediately snapped that blade.

Final penetration with a knife blade had to be accomplished with a vicious muscular stab and then the ridged contours of the plastic still defied entrance.

My logic contemplated taking it out to the shop, clamp it in a vice and use the saws all or angle grinder to gain entry but felt that any packaging manufacturer with a lick of common sense and consideration for some little old lady simply trying to get her item out of the packaging would never logically make it so impossible and dangerous to open. So, I searched the house for an appropriate tool. I did have a pair of metal cutters handy, which I’m sure Gramma wouldn’t have in her kitchen, and with considerable effort eventually exposed enough of the contents that I could carefully muscle them out without physical damage to myself. Opening this was a long-drawn-out, scary, affair.

What remained was a massive chunk of chopped up, useless, plastic and when I looked for the recycle emblem on it, there was none. It was intentionally manufactured as a single use plastic that filled a goodly portion of my garbage can going straight to the land fill, never to totally rot but to join the other micro plastics that have already invaded our food chain.

The comprehension that some Capitalist products can be so far divorced from the reality of the simple consumer is staggering. The danger aspect of opening that packaging borders on criminal intent to injure. The total disregard for the environmental garbage this packaging becomes should no longer be allowed. Abusive, single use, packaging should be outlawed and the suppliers should be held accountable.