Packaging Technology in Fitzhugh’s The Organ Grinders :: Environment Environmental Pollution Preservation

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 th e 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.