Overmatter: Bun-gled pack print

Photo: Reddit: A911owner

For Printweek’s sustainability issue, this tale of a bap-based packaging palaver seems somehow highly appropriate.

Thanks go to Reddit user ‘A911owner’ for sharing this find – a batch of Aldi hamburger buns that ticked the box in terms of doing away with single-use plastic packaging, but were unfortunately rendered inedible in the process.

It is, apparently, a pretty common occurrence in the world of mass-market breadmaking, although perhaps not so common for the bread to actually make it onto the shelves in a naked, dried out state. Breadcrumbs, anyone? Even a duck might turn its beak up at this offering.

“I touched them...they were... brittle...,” A911owner revealed, on Reddit’s ‘mildly interesting’ subreddit, which has a whopping 19.2m members who are rightly there for this sort of high-quality content.

Overmatter is, of course, particularly taken with the delightful printy detail of the batch number and best before date being inkjetted directly onto one of the rolls. 

In line with the reuse, reduce, recycle zeitgeist, we suggest that perhaps the rock-hard buns could be used as some sort of alternative construction material.