Waste Not Exhibition

Where: Museum of Brands Packaging and Advertising, 2 Colville Mews, Lonsdale Road, London, W11 2AR

Times
Tuesday - Saturday: 10.00 - 18.00, Sunday: 11.00 - 17.00, closed Monday

Admission
Adults £5.80 Concessions £3.50 Children £2

During the austerity years of the 1940s, Britain had to economise on raw materials, save on energy and salvage scarce commodities. Encouraged by a powerful propaganda machine, a motivated population devised ingenious ways to reduce packaging and make everything last longer.

Whether the message was to grow your own vegetables, make do and mend, or save on fuel, uppermost in everyone’s mind was the need to be sparing in the use of meagre resources.

In this exhibition, the encouragement to save is startlingly similar to the situation of today. Thus 65 years ago a poster said, ‘Will all customers kindly carry all purchases possible with them and bring own paper’. Today the message is to use fewer carrier bags. In the 1940s, housewives were asked to put waste paper and cardboard out for the salvage collector; today our local councils encourage the very same behaviour.

While few may now remember those years of rationing and blackouts, the lessons from the past can teach us how to make better use of limited resources today.

This exhibition is being held as part of the Museum of Brands, Packaging and Advertising’s new initiative, Packaging our Sustainable Future, sponsored by Tesco.

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