Talking about excess when it comes to medicines Americans have filled
60 million prescriptions for sleeping pills which has now been found to have a correlation to cancer and other mortality causing effects (correlation is not causation!). Additionally, I just brought some allergy medicines which was a packet of 14 pills in a large package (see image above). I would guess that the packaging here might take the cake when it comes to excess amount of use of plastic, aluminum wrap and paper in putting together just 14 pills when in fact they could have used a small glass pill box (I am assuming that glass making is less polluting and toxic and recyclable, and need to check my science on that!) to sell the same medicine.
This brings to my mind the regulations in UK on
Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive which require for packaging to be minimized and limited to a certain ratio of the product being sold. For all the cost-benefit analysis done, the short sightedness of capitalism means that we are creating toxic waste which is going to ruin our lives, for which capitalism will find the cure in a pill!
Not much hope here!
