Pump packs are the work of the devil. Not only are they a waste of metal and plastic, when it’s finished there’s always a load of product at the bottom that gets chucked out along with the bottle ‘coz it’s just too much hassle to try and tap it through the (often skinny) bottleneck. Don’t you hate that spluttering noise when the stuff runs out, the deliberately* short straw is no longer immersed in liquid, and it’s just sucking up air like some kind of demented fish gasping for breath?

The companies that make these products flog “refill packs” supposedly to address the problem of packaging waste, but of course all they’re doing is selling more product. Another bugbear of mine is when they make the bottles out of opaque plastic so that you can’t even see how much is is left (and how much is going to waste!)

Pump packs are also entirely useless in showers, where there is rarely a solid surface at a decent height to allow you to apply the pressure needed to operate the pump. The amount that you get is also entirely determined by the pumping mechanism’s ability (or lack of ability). Hands particularly dirty and you need a lot of soap? Sorry mate, keep pumping.

Gargh! Do you see why I’m annoyed by pump packs?

I reckon that for liquids of sufficient viscosity – which is pretty much everything that’s currently available in pump packs – soaps, gels, etc. – the “upside down” bottles, or the ones with the flip-top lids (like the picture on the left) should be standard.

For those of you out there that like pump packs, please help me to understand why…

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* Well, I can’t prove anything really, but take a look at your nearest pump pack and see if it gets anywhere near to touching the bottom…

“Single roll” toilet paper dispensers are the work of the devil. At home it’s not so much of a problem because you can always just go and get another roll (or yell for your wife to bring it :P) but I’m talking about commercial or public toilets with those massive rolls.

At the church where I used to volunteer, we always had to throw out “nearly finished” rolls – imagine you found yourself in a public loo running out of toilet paper because some stingy accountant was trying to save money by ordering the cleaners not to change the roll until every last sheet was used. Being a public venue and having dispensers of the type which locked, we couldn’t put a spare roll for people to replace themselves. Not that somebody would try and slip a giant 2Kg toilet roll down their pants to take home; maybe it was more to prevent kids from rolling them down the stairs. Would it have been cheap to hoard the leftovers and take them home?

when designing and building the toilets it may have been cheaper to buy the single-roll dispenser, but this choice ultimately led to more waste, and hence both financial and environmental cost, than if a little extra had been spent on the double-dispenser.

This is but one of the everyday inefficiencies that I want to combat through this blog. Are there examples of inefficiencies in your world? I’m always open to ideas for topics that I can help bring to peoples’ attention, so leave a comment below!