Kate O’Toole: Raging against plastic wrapping

There was carnage in the kitchen this morning: there was so much splattered liquid that the walls will need to be hosed down after everyone has recovered.

No animals were harmed during the making of this epic catastrophe, just a few fingers and an obstinate Tetrapak of milk. It refused to open, seemed inclined to argue with me and met its messy end by being stabbed to death with a breadknife.

The correct term for this scenario is “wrap rage”. It’s a real thing, apparently. When it comes to plastic packaging, most of us know how rapidly “tamper proof” can escalate into “full-blown psychosis” every time.

The worst offenders are the strong, heat-sealed packages that things like scissors come in. You need a pair of scissors to open them, if not a blowtorch, but if you already had scissors you wouldn’t be buying the things in the first place.

Then there are the irritations caused by the promise of the instruction to “tear here” on the corner of small sachets. Why tear here? Why not tear there? What difference does it make when it’s impossible to tear anywhere with your bare hands? Whatever’s inside them invariably ends up in your mouth, whether it’s edible or not. Perhaps this is a deliberate design flaw.

Having to use one’s snarling teeth to gain access to the contents of the wretched sachet often makes me wonder: wouldn’t it be easier to just buy a large bottle of shampoo and drink it straight from the neck?

Cellophane ease

I don’t remember things being this difficult to open in times past. Cigarettes, for example, used to come in flimsy cellophane wrappers that always had a little red tag you pulled to open the entire cellophane in one swift movement.

Why can’t DVDs have that? Why do we have to spend 10 minutes trying to get brittle fingernails inside the joins of robust DVD wrapping, which always tears only a tiny little bit, leaving you back at the start but now with the need for a manicure while you watch the movie?

My first memory of plastic is the intoxicating smell of a Tiny Tears doll. This is not a pastel-coloured remembrance of innocent times past – these were hard-shell babies you force-fed with water before making them cry by punching their squishy stomachs. I’m not making this up.

Let’s hope it’s just a coincidence Barbie dolls wore the exact same perfume. It smelled good, almost like petrol fumes. None of the kids I hung out with in nursery school had much interest in dolls. Our behaviour towards them was in fact ruthless but, my God, we did love how they smelled. As soon as her base notes began to fade, Tiny Tears was of no further use or interest and was placed on death row without any sentiment whatsoever.

No more heady odours meant it was time to pull off the doll’s head and limbs, bury them in the garden, claim it got lost and plead for a replacement, which would deliver the fresh buzz our noses so craved.

We never even bothered to make the dolls cry; we just inhaled them, chopped them up and buried them in the herbaceous border. It was all a bit 10 Rillington Place; they are probably still lying there, silent and accusatory in their graves.

Intransigence is built into the very DNA of plastic. The earth can’t digest or transform any of it, ever. Three quarters of the rubbish in our oceans is made of plastic bags and packaging.

We think nothing of using plastic bottles once before discarding them like worn-out Barbie dolls. The staggeringly wealthy Tetrapak family is among the richest in the world because it sells more than 200 million plastic-coated cartons a day, every day, forever and ever, amen.

Recycling amnesia

The “out of sight, out of mind” lunacy is we really do imagine we’ve got rid of something just because it’s been put in a recycling bin. The reality is that nothing plastic will ever stop bearing testament to our sins. Yes, it offers the convenience of cheaper distribution, benefits for consumer health and safety, longer shelf life, etc. But, on the whole, Planet Plastic has never struck me as being all that civilised.

The arguments in its favour rely so heavily on consumer friendliness and convenience, they are easily ruptured if the product fails to be consumer-friendly at the very first hurdle: by being harder to break into than Tutankhamun’s tomb.

This morning’s outbreak of wrap rage was massively inconvenient in every aspect. There’s now no milk in the house other than what’s on the ceiling. I may have to open a box of wine before tackling the cleaning job ahead.

And if that won't open, I'll stamp on it until it cries.

Kate O’Toole is an actress and a recovering Facebook addict