Packaging Technology in Fitzhugh’s The Organ Grinders
Once upon a time, people had to go to a public market and buy fresh food everyday. If the food wasn’t used that day or the next, it would spoil and would be wasted. Today, with the help of packaging, food can be stored for weeks, months and sometimes even years before it has to be used. Because of packaging, food is cleaner and can be kept longer, many things can be purchased more conveniently, and life as a whole is easier. Like nearly everything else ever invented, packaging and disposable goods are not without their negative aspects as well. Americans throw out more than 180 million tons of garbage each year (Fitzhugh 93).
On the website for the company Tetra Pak, which is a packaging company that deals mostly in liquid food products, they list four major benefits to packaging: protection, preservation, communication, and convenience (Tetra Pak). The first two reasons are obvious. Packaging provides a sealed safe place for food, away from water, air, and other things that could potentially damage it or cause it to be ruined. The product is also preserved by the packaging. The package can keep the food or item usable for a much longer time then if it did not have the packaging around it. Once of the best examples of this is with canned goods. Canning food allows it to be kept for an incredibly long time, whereas fresh goods must be used up quickly, before they expire. TetraPak.com lists communication as their third benefit of packaging. Packages can contain a lot of information about the product itself. For food items, they list the ingredients on the package, along with other information, like the amount that the package contains, and possible warnings. Packages can also draw the consumer to the good and increase the merchant’s sales. Lastly, packages offer convenience. It is no longer necessary to go to the market every day to buy fresh produce. Customers can now buy their food and store it in its packages for quite a long time. The website also states that packages help keep messy foods and things off of our hands and simply makes things easier for the consumer (Tetra Pak).
With all of these benefits, it is no wonder why nearly every product comes in a package of some kind.
Packaging can seriously impact your sales profits, by affecting your consumer's perceptions of your brand. How does this happen? For one thing, the purchase decisions made in-store are made unconsciously, for the most part. Yes, while traditional packaging methods are betting on your consumer's use of logic, rationality and reason, eye-tracking tests have indicated another reality. What is that reality? It's that your consumers are making their purchases based on emotion and instinct.
A market where people can buy healthy, sustainable, organic local foods and goods, all without the marketing ploys and harmful environmental effects of wasteful packaging. It has been reported that 23% of all landfill waste is excess packaging, and certain modifications in types of packaging, like tin-foil liners in burger cartons or wrappers, makes then unable to be recycled and also inhibits their decomposition (EPA). By sourcing from local farmers and growers, and eliminating excess waste, the cost-effectiveness is passed on to the community
After the First World War, most of the world suffered a deep economic depression. One of the countries kept a tight control over the German economy. German frustration and resentment steadily grew. The people were looking for three things. The first thing they sought was a leader-someone to put Germany back on its feet. The second thing they wanted was a scapegoat, someone to blame for Germany’s poverty and depression. The third thing the people wanted was revenge against a world that, in the eyes of the German people, had insulted and wronged their country with World War I’s restitution and occupation of Germany. They chose their leader in the form of Adolph Hitler and his Nazi party. The Nazi party also gave them a scapegoat with its strong anti-Semitic beliefs. Hitler’s plan for revenge began a campaign to take over large portions of Europe. As Michel states in his book World War II, "The world was still recovering from the economic strain of WWI, it was the opportune time for Hitler to strike." Hitler had a good understanding of this and devised his plan around it (Michel 2). The German public during this time was fed much propaganda and a false sense of nationalism. This gave Hitler and the Nazi party absolute control. Although muc...
Americans throw millions of pounds of food away every year. Although this waste is done by growers, businesses and consumers, they all share one thing in common: that much of the food thrown away is perfectly usable. According to John Oliver, Americans
Most of the necessities humans need are provided in supermarkets, in fact supermarkets have become a necessity for our everyday life. They are now the main source of water, food, clothes and everyday tools. Therefore, the plastic bags demanded and supplied in this industry increase every day. In the past decade, we produced as much plastic as we did in the whole twentieth century (Freinkel, 2011). This exponential increase of a non-biodegradable material has negatively impacted our environment immensely. Plastic production requires our dwindling fossil fuel resources, robs away animal lives, litters our beautiful landscapes and even affects our very own well-being. Hence, if plastic production doesn’t diminish immediately, we will suffer great
When Barack Obama ran for presidency, there were a lot of questions about his race, color, and whether he was born in the U.S.. The comments from his pastor Jeremiah Wright put him in an awkward situation, so he decided to give this speech to prove the point that we are all the same and live in the same country, so there shouldn’t be any discrimination among anyone. In his speech, Obama uses rhetorical devices to explain how race discrimination is affecting our country and us in every way possible. The use of rhetorical devices in this speech has strong effects on the audience. The use of allusion, symbolism, optimistic tone, and repetition of words gives the speech a strong argumentative tone. He argues the fact that to be able to achieve such big goals and how out country was supposed to be from the beginning, we need to stay united and rely on younger
Existentialist “protest against the dehumanization and depersonalization of man” and “hold on to the subjectivity of man: as the original center, the source of initiative, who has depth, who transcends determinations, the openness and giver of meaning to the world.” Thus, existentialist “stressed on man’s existence, on man as situated” and also, “on man’s freedom.”
According to world renowned French existentialist philosopher, political activist and novelist Jean-Paul Sartre, “man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself”. This idea forms the foundation of existentialism, a philosophical movement originating in France and Germany, and rising to popularity after World War II. Existentialism emphasizes the individual’s freedom of choice, which solely gives life its meaning. Existentialism holds the individual responsible for their own creation and development, and the consequences that arise from their choices and free will, or lack thereof. Franz Kafka, considered by many to be an existential writer, heavily focused on the meaning of life and how actions create the individual, especially in his
Humankind produces and consumes with little regard for waste. Susan Strasser’s Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash focuses on consumption’s byproduct; trash and what humankind has done to dispose of their waste over the past decades. Strasser catalogues an often deemed unsophisticated part of our modern society as being “central to our lives yet generally silenced or ignore” (p.36), throughout her book elucidating on the premise that one’s own view and opinion of what is deemed as trash varies greatly from person to person. Strasser explicates to the reader the rise of mass markets across the world and the impacts that production and consumption have on the creation of trash. Strasser begins to follow the story of trash in the pre-colonial
Many customers will buy more package food in the future as it is cheaper and more convenience because customers can buy it in high volume and keep it for the long time.
The importance attached to packaging cannot be underscored by anybody. Companies use packaging as a marketing strategy and marketing is branded with frequent cases of unethical practices. Customers are always very cautious when dealing with marketers. It is because of this reason that over the time ethical packaging has been evolving and attracting attention from different government authorities for regulation. Nevertheless, businesses that are committed and have cultivated a deep culture of good ethical packaging practices continue to enjoy the benefits of ethical packaging.
Using plastic bags are second nature to people in this day and age. Warner acknowledges, “Much to the dismay of the environmentally conscious citizens worldwide, the ubiquity of the free plastic carryout bag has bred nonchalant consumers who take this modern convenience for granted” (646). Although some people are conscious about the environment, people strive more for convenience and do not think about the impacts using bags have not only on the environment, but on themselves as well. If something is bad for the environment, it will alternatively be bad for humans as well. When plastic bags are exposed to the sun from being littered all around, the ultraviolet rays cause the substances of plastic bags to weaken. After the substances weaken, the substances become invisible to the naked eye. The substances that are no longer able to be seen are toxic to humans (Warner 649). As a result of plastic bags being littered around, animals consume plastic bags. This is negatively affects humans because animals are often consumed. When humans consume animals like, fish, there can be plastic in the fish’s belly, which then transfers to the humans and this poses a concern for human’s health. Humans are negatively affected by plastic bags because of the toxic chemicals in plastic bags, as well as, consuming animals with plastic in their
Everyone has heard a cashier one time or another mumble, “Paper or plastic?” as he put their groceries in a bag, but do shoppers know the effects of each vessel in which they carry their comestibles? There are many issues and benefits to both paper and plastic. The making and recycling of both paper and plastic bags can harm the environment. One must also look at the costs of making each bag. The convenience of each is also something to look at. Many people jump to conclusion that paper bags are better for the environment without knowing the facts. Since plastic bags are preferred by customers and plastic bags actually do not hurt the environment as much as paper ones do, consumers should feel at ease when choosing plastic.
The single most important environmental issue today is over-consumerism, which leads to excess waste. We buy too much. We think we always need new and better stuff. Will we ever be satisfied? There will always be something better or cooler on the market. Because we live in a capitalistic consumer culture, we have absorbed things like: “Get it while the getting’s good,” “Offer ends soon, buy while it lasts,” “For great deals, come on down…Sunday Sunday Sunday!” We, kids from 1 to 92, have become saturated with commercials like: Obey your thirst. How much of our consumption is compulsive buying, merely obeying our momentary thirst? Do we actually need all that we buy? Could we survive efficiently, even happily, without making so many shopping center runs? Once after I made a Target run with mom, I noticed that most of the bulkiness within my plastic bags with red targets symbols on them was made up of the products’ packaging. I then thought about all the bags that were piled on the floor near us…all of the bags piled on the floors of many homes throughout America daily.
People should know the negative impact throwing away a water bottle or newspaper, purchasing meat from the grocery store or consuming gasoline has on the environment, and many do not. By informing society about how their decisions affect the environment, we can help save our planet and change our attitude toward the land we live on, the water we drink and the air we breathe” and truly show respect for the stuff that we depend on. The United States produces “about 8.25 billion tons of solid waste each year” (Russell 1). People do not realize the impact they have on our planet and the environment. When people throw anything in the trashcan, they are contributing to the destruction of our planet.