Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Buyer Beware: Bad Packaging

The other day at Target I saw something new in the egg aisle: Simply Balanced brand organic brown eggs in updated clear packaging. While at first glance this might seem a good idea - being able to actually "see" the eggs through the carton to be able to tell if any are broken or not - this packaging is actually problematic for a couple of reasons.

First off, using plastic is a lot more environmentally un-friendly than traditional paperboard egg cartons. And secondly: I looked all over this carton for a "freshness date", and could not find one. I thought perhaps I'd picked up one that wasn't stamped, so I inspected two other cartons and still couldn't find a date. The only place I didn't look was inside the carton... but if you have a clear case, then doesn't hiding the sell-by date inside defeat the purpose of being able to see the contents without having to open the package?

2 comments:

Tina said...

I thought I read on a shelf talker, that this was only temporary. Warehouse problem or something. Saw the sign a few weeks back.

Target Addict said...

Thanks, Tina. So you mean that the cartons "without dates" are only temporary? And that they'll be adding them eventually? That's good, but in the meantime, I wouldn't advise buying eggs with no dates on them.
And my store didn't have any signage in the egg section; glad that yours did.