CZECH REPUBLIC: Packaging Leads to More Sales also More Waste

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

David Rocks

PRAGUE, Dec 31 1994 (IPS) - The Czech Republic’s new entrepreneurs are learning that elaborate packaging — often a lot of it — can mean more sales, but environmentalists are concerned that it is also leading to a bigger pile-up of waste.

Gone are the days of rows of products in grey and brown paper sacks, each one distinguished from the next by little more than stenciled lettering on the bag: detergent, beans, paint, eggs, bread crumbs.

Czech stores now look much like shops in Western Europe or the United States, with a choice of several brands in most items, and colorful labels with pictures identifying what is inside.

Everything from toys to electronics to milk to car parts is now packaged more elaborately here than it was before the Velvet Revolution that overthrew communism five years ago.

“As a consumer, you buy the beauty of the product,” said Chris Steinbrecher, managing director of the multinational Unilever’s soap, deodorant and perfume divisions in the Czech Republic. “The products are there to make you beautiful. … If you want to look beautiful, the product must be appealing.”

But if the drab products are disappearing, so too are many of the returnable and recyclable packages they were delivered in.

Today, individual servings of orange, apple and grapefruit juice fight for shelf space with blister packs of gum and candy, non-returnable plastic bottles of mineral water and foil-wrapped bags of potato chips, crackers and peanuts.

“I would not say that ecological concerns were the primary goal of the socialist system, but in terms of packaging, there was less of an adverse impact on the environment,” said Pavel Novak, a ministry of environment official who deals with issues of municipal waste.

“But,” he added: “Socialism did not take into account the comfort or convenience of the consumer.”

Comfort and convenience, of course, are almost synonymous with success in a capitalist system. And most Czechs seem quite happy to relegate communism’s returnable packages to the dust bin of history, even if it means burying themselves in a pile of garbage at the same time.