A pile of plastic

Americans consume over 200 pounds of plastic per year, and a third of it (60 pounds) is simply discarded packaging. The financial total is equally staggering: 10 cents of every dollar, $400 billion dollars a year spent just to wrap, enclose and seal everything from bread to Batman toys.

The manufacturing industry alone sucks one-third of the energy and 13% of the water supply in the U.S., never mind all the waste -- 7.6 billion tons of it -- that's produced before products even reach our hands. And when those products do hit our homes, what is our first task? To extract whatever it is that we actually wanted to buy.

And what's the result of all this packaging? A tool designed just to help us liberate our consumer goods from the packaging. And you might want it.

According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, injuries from plastic packaging resulted in 6,400 visits to emergency rooms in 2004.

Hmm. Perhaps I'll go for the "open box" item.