Cardboard

Ed Summer 2006

I work in a supermarket, and we, like many other supermarkets, sell food stuffs. Nothing suspect there right? Well, it is the material that these products come in, is where the fascination lies for me. I was breaking down boxes the other day in the store room and putting it into the compactor as usual, and it occurred to me, I have no idea where this stuff goes. I break it, compact it, bind it into a box, I come back the next week and wolla, its, its, well, it’s gone! And there is such diversity in the world of cardboard, I mean u probably think there is only one type of cardboard, but you my friend, are wrong. There is the nice shiny stuff u might find on a display box of ‘vienesse family selection 450g’, and then there is the more sturdy boxes that hold the mangos in, and then..... Well I cud go on.
So I decided that I could go on no longer in this packaging induced darkness about this matter. So, it was on that day I went to consult the stock room technician about where these innocent boxes were going, and who was taking them and more importantly WHY?.
After a brief yet informative discussion, I extracted the information that I needed. It seems, you see, that a van comes and collects them off us to be recycled. The only catch is, if one wants to dispose of your cardboard cuboids you have to pay THEM, and then they go recycle it and sell it back to YOU. This to me seems like a stupid idea; however I commend the genius who came up with a way of making money both ways on the peddling of thin slices of tree flesh.

It is a fellow by the name of Smurfit who is responsible for this business idea. He is one of the richest men in the country currently, and is someone who commands great respect, not only did he make millions on cardboard boxes, but he had the name SMURFit to contend with his whole life, poor guy, if only poppa could see him now, his face would turn an even bluer blue of joy.

Another money making scheme that relied on the properties of cardboard was POGS, do you remember them, well I do, and it is my humble belief that the person who invented pogs should be declared a national hero of what ever country he/she/it came from. Well actually let me correct my self, pogs as we no them were not 'invented' by anyone. The game of pogs originates from Hawaii where people used to use the caps off the fruit juice of 'passion fruit, Orange and guava' a popular beverage at the time. The game was merely repopularised in the mid 1990s, but this time the game demanded a certain level of affluence to be played, unless u were flamboyant enough with your cash to spend 1 pound on six, yes six, pieces of cardboard then u weren’t allowed to play.
I however, being of considerable wealth was able to afford many dozens of cardboard circles, and had all of series 1,2, and world series, but I digress.

With all this new cardboardy info under my belt it occurred to me, hey why should i care about cardboard, its never been nice to me once, not once. Did u ever get a paper cut? I did and I cried heavily, then I got a plastic cut, off sheet plastic holding 150g strawberry yoghurts, on the fuppin thumb, in the CRACK! I cried and sobbed.
THEN while unpacking ‘deliciously nutty crunch’ cereal boxes, I got a cardboard cut, this was a cut above the rest, it was on the tip of my thumb, and all the stupid little recycled, reconstituted fibery bits went into the cut too. Come to think of it, the fact the cardboard is as shoddy as it is, is the fault of a certain SMURF, well I’m warning u now Mr. Smurfit, if u send your fibery minions after me again, it will be you who pays the price, not the customer. . . twice.

online since Jan 06

The films & images hosted here at Buckled Cranium Productions are subject to copyright & creative commons. Buckled Cranium Productions at buckledcranium@gmail.com takes no responsibility for the views, opinions & content submitted by visitors to this website & little-no resonsibility for the views opinions & content submitted by its moderators respectively.