Let's put a stop to packaging overkill

Many years ago, during my time as a foreign student, I would return during the longer school vacations to visit my family on the East Coast of the United States.

Although it was so familiar to me, it was as though my eyes were seeing for the first time the peculiarities of suburban middle-class life in the United States each time I returned to the small middle-class town I was raised in.

For one thing, people didn't walk anywhere. You might be headed for a shop less than a kilometer away, yet whether it was summer or winter, rain or shine, you went by car.