Paper or Plastic - Searching for Solutions to an Overpackaged

You won't have read a book quite like this before, full as it is of fascinating facts about packaging along with some stirring photos. An initial statistic: about a third of America's municipal solid waste is packaging, which has considerable 'upstream' costs in terms of energy. As you can imagine, the rise in bottled water consumption poses a huge waste problem, not to mention disposable food and drink containers and shopping bags. The packaging market is worth $500 bn a year and is growing, alas, at 4% a year! After reading this book you will never think of packaging in the same way - the whole landscape is described, then the search for solutions - with many encouraging case histories. A final section makes suggestions about what we can do - have cloth shopping bags in the car and carry a mug for your coffee - I wonder what Costa would think of your offering your own mug: what size would it be?