Containers too big? Here’s why

Sometimes underfilling is unavoidable Consumer Talk

IREGULARLY get e-mails from readers who are annoyed by the “over-packaging” of products, for several reasons – it gives consumers the impression that they’re getting more product than they really are, it adds unnecessarily to the cost of the product and it’s not environmentally friendly.

Those giant cereal boxes with relatively small bags of cereal inside them are often cited as examples of annoying overpackaging.

Tessa Botha’s bugbear is vitamin bottles. “Every time I open a new container of vitamins, I am annoyed at how misleading the size of the container is, as the vitamins or powder never take up more than two-thirds of the space,” she told Consumer Talk.

“I’m puzzled by this strategy as it implies consumers are brainless creatures who will buy a product because it’s in a bigger bottle.

“Apart from that, the practice is environmentally damaging. Smaller containers would use less plastic.

“Are there rules as to the size of packaging and how full a container should be?”

I posed this question to the Health Products Association of SA. Responding, Deirdre Allen began by addressing the packaging of powders.

They are released from overhead containers into bottles, becoming aerated

FoodState’s marketing director, Celecia Pleass, confirmed that the company used the same sized bottle for a month’s supply of all its products.

“This is standard practice in the complementary and alternative medicines industry, as few plastic companies produce a small bottle,” she said.

“In some cases, a month’s supply is 30 small tablets, in which case we use a sponge to stop them rattling around, and in others it’s 60 large capsules, which only just fit into the container,” she said.

“I do not believe this to be misleading as all the labels declare the quantity on the outside.”

The bottles and labels were recyclable, Pleass said.

Price

Head of customer health care at Vital Health Foods, Andrea du Plessis, said the company had recently changed its packaging from foil bags inside cardboard boxes to standard-sized plastic containers, mainly because the foil bags were not recyclable.

“Some products fill the plastic containers, while others only fill a third to a half,” she said.

“Making different size moulds and machines for different products would have affected the price of the products dramatically, which is why we settled on the standard size.”

Of course, someone who only bought a variant comprising small tablets which didn’t even fill half the container, would question the mismatch, and the apparent wastage.

Another reader sent me a photo of an open bottle of Comfort fabric softener, clearly showing that the liquid does not come close to filling the bottle.

Responding, Unilever’s external affairs and media manager, Unathi Mgobozi, said the product was fully imported from Vietnam.

“Owing to global restraints, we have been unable to source a smaller bottle,” she said.

“We made concerted efforts before putting the product on shelf, to ensure we cannot be unfairly accused of under-fill – the 1 000ml bottles are clearly marked as containing 800ml of the product and the dosage as 40ml.

“And we have also included a see-through strip on the 1 000ml bottle to show consumers that the bottle actually contains 800ml of the product.”

Unilever is building a new liquids factory in Boksburg which will enable the company to “provide the right size bottles to match the content”. Good to know. Whatever the reason, consumers don’t generally respond well to opening a pack and discovering less product inside than they were expecting. THE streets of Mumbai are empty after threats of nuclear annihilation.

Sarita however, can only think of getting a pomegranate for her physicist husband Karun, who has mysteriously disappeared for more than two weeks.

Jaz, a young, handsome man, is looking for his lover as well.

Jaz is a Muslim, but his true religion is sex with men.

With the Bollywood blockbuster Superdevi as the ever pervasive backdrop, Sarita and Jaz negotiate their way in the city and find themselves drawn to the patron goddess Devima, the supposed saviour of the city. FIVE stories, set in five different places and times, where five very different characters explore life, love and lament. I was hooked.

It’s 1938, World War II is about to start and Oxford graduate Geoffrey Talbot, who has been working as a schoolmaster at a boys’ prep school in Nottinghamshire, has volunteered for the infantry.

Having badly bungled an exercise, Geoffrey, fluent in French, escapes a court martial, ending up in an “irregular” force bound for occupied France. Dropped in France, Geoffrey trusts the wrong person, is arrested and sent to one of the worst German concentration camps.

This is a story about three people haunted by love that

At one point, spading corpses into an incinerator, Geoffrey pushes his mind from the task at hand, daydreaming about a favourite cricket ground, “swinging the ball, dispatching it high over long on for six…”

All five stories, written in prose suitable to the character at hand, have moments which shock and disturb.

Story number two, set in London during the mid-19th century, sees narrator, Billy, the middle child of five, shunted off to the workhouse. His parents just can’t feed the extra mouth… Despite the

will change them in the most startling way. harsh life inside, and the lack of humanity, Billy emerges, “no longer a burden on the parish” but a wiry teen, with confidence and know how. Billy is not going to go down again, he’s learnt some life lessons.

The three other stories are equally dissimilar and intriguing.

In Everything Can Be Explained, Italian schoolgirl, Elena Duranti, suddenly gains a brother, Bruno, when her father brings the boy back from an orphanage, in Trieste.

Elena and Bruno’s relationship swings in and out of the story, set in 2029, which