I’ve had this recurring dream (actually a nightmare) in which I spent my last seconds on Earth trying gamely to open a package containing a drug prescribed to keep me alive until the next life beckons. But the lifesaver is safely ensconced in its plastic bubble attached with 11 other lifesaving pills on a gassed-up sheet of some kind of aluminum foil. The whole thing is shrink-wrapped, resulting in a fortress of packaging that would survive an attack by the Ukraine Army. The result, in my dream, is the EMS people arrive too late. Another victim of packaging lies frozen in rigor mortis, hands like claws trying to open the package of lifesaving medicine.
The engineers I know are law-abiding men and women who enjoy solving problems. They are able to “see” how a road will need to curve or a large convention center will need more ladies’ bathrooms. But in creating effective packaging that will protect the product, they’ve forgotten the consumer.
How many times have you stabbed the hard plastic bubbles containing a new roll of duct tape? And don’t forget batteries and dog toys and all kinds of things, mostly little things shrink-wrapped or trapped in its plastic bubble with no obvious escape. Most of us don’t mind a small amount of frustration, but let’s say you are preparing for a long journey, to a remote place far from civilization, like Philadelphia. Like most experienced travelers you travel with a bunch of medicines – prescribed and over the counter – that anticipates health problems, like pain, stomach disorders, skin disturbances. Or you are camping and you come down with gastrointestinal distress. The remedy comes in caplets safely buried in those aluminum foil sheets with plastic pods that hold the pill So a race develops between the victim and the package of relief. A good night’s sleep in the wild or an evening in an outhouse. A well-educated engineer should have figured it out.
And speaking of engineers, if one of them would figure out a way to shrink-wrap bullets we could eliminate war. Here is my proposal to end war forever: we put pressure on American gun and ammunition manufacturers to get behind a law calling for all ordnance (such as bullets, bombs and anything else about to explode) to be individuality wrapped and sold a la carte. Available at any Walgreens or CVS store, next to the laxatives and home health care.
It’ll work because from rockets to bullets, American manufacturers sell their goods to a worldwide market. An international law that requires any bullets, bombs or other ordnance be wrapped in shrink-wrapped plastic would mean that any country buying guns from us would find the bullets in the same plastic prison we use for rolls of duct tape and batteries. Imagine that.
When the battle is over the battlefield will be littered with plastic. The winning side could collect and sell the plastic or withhold it while market forces figure a profit. Death counts will plummet.
Is there an engineer out there who could take this on? I will share my Nobel Prize with him or her. I’ll send out a letter as soon as I figure out how to unwrap my new printer cartridge.
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