Indian students mail 20,000 empty food wrappers to manufacturers

A dramatic act of protest reminds companies to take responsibility for the wasteful packaging they produce. Each morning this week I’ve passed a sign nailed to a telephone pole that says, "The problem with litter is YOU!" This sign irritates me because I think it’s dead wrong. While people need to be respectful of their surroundings and not throw garbage away willy-nilly, they are not the problem here. They are victims of a system that is designed to fail . When almost every single thing we buy comes with excessive, non-biodegradable, or hard-to-recycle packaging, it’s absurd to expect people not to generate any litter, ever. A much better approach, as we’ve argued before on TreeHugger , is to target the manufacturers of the goods we buy, demanding that they take responsibility for the full life-cycle of their packaging, preferably through collection for reuse. But how does one push companies to do such a thing? A group of school girls from the Indian city of Toothukudi in Tamil Nadu has tackled this issue in an interesting and innovative way . Prompted by city council, students at Subbiah Vidyalayam Girls Higher Secondary School collected all food wrappers that they generated during […]

Click here to view original web page at Indian students mail 20,000 empty food wrappers to manufacturers