It started with a shrink-wrapped coconut. Then, as we delved further into the murky depths of the packaging industry, we discovered some startling facts. How much energy does it take to produce the yogurt pots, carrier bags and plastic bottles that end up in your bin? We asked four families to collect a month's worth of rubbish and our experts put their waste to the test. By Lucy Siegle

Now that I've purchased 30 of them from the Stratford-upon-Avon branch of Morrisons, I can legitimately declare that I have a lovely bunch of coconuts. Actually, I've always had a fondness for coconut. Not just the taste, but because they represent a peerless example of mother nature's ability to provide a delicious foodstuff in a robust, appropriate, convenient and ultimately biodegradable container (ie the husk).

Sadly, however, this bunch is not as lovely as it should be - each coconut being individually shrink-wrapped and daubed with a metalised sticker, presumably for barcode reasons. This also explains why I bought the entire stock to record for posterity and research purposes. We were alerted to the shrink-wrapped coconut phenomenon by Sam Dixon, one of our readers who has had enough of the excess baggage that apparently comes with the 21st-century food shop: 'This is the most ridiculous piece of packaging I've ever come across,' he wrote unequivocally, enclosing Exhibit A, 'and the moment at which I realised I never needed to see another piece of shrink-wrapping again. Ever.'

Increasingly, householders, shoppers, people who like wildlife, those inclined to worry about squandering resources, landfill, pollution or energy use, agree with Mr Dixon. As do people who are just tired of walking down the high street dodging swirling plastic bags or spending 15 minutes trying to work out whether a laminated pasta packet will contaminate their recycling. The world is not entirely unfamiliar with anti-packaging protests: the Bavarian equivalent of the Women's Institute became something of a professional anti-packaging organisation in the early Nineties when a determined mob of angry hausfraus occupied the main supermarkets and refused to leave until retailers acquiesced to their demands for simplified, eco-friendly packaging.

By comparison, the UK has kept fairly quiet - perhaps that nation of shopkeepers thing meant we have traditionally been tolerant of ever more elaborate means to make us part with our cash. However, in an age where anti-supermarket polemics (such as Joanna Blythman's Shopped and William Young's Sold Out) are the equivalent of ethical chick lit, it was inevitable that the 4.6m tonnes of packaging waste we throw away each year, adding around £480 a year to the average food bill, and considered by many consumers to be beyond the pale in environmental terms, would become a topic for consumer rebellion. So expect to see an increasing amount of direct action like the 'Take It Back' protests in Brighton, which organises the severely disgruntled to arrive at a particular supermarket at a pre-appointed time and, rip the excess packaging off their shopping and dump it right there in the supermarket.

Back to coconutgate, and an official response from Morrisons: 'Morrisons coconuts are shrink-wrapped to ensure that they reach the customer in the very best condition. The packaging helps to keep the product fresh, limit damage from breakages, stop coconut hairs getting into other foodstuffs during transport and allows an information label to be attached.' While coconut hair has never been one of my top 10 worries, this is probably enough for the supermarket to justify its shrink-wrap decision on the grounds that the consumer demands it. Crediting dodgy packaging to the consumer's wants and needs is difficult to refute and explains why, despite an EU law which forbids overpackaging, experts can only cite three examples of prosecutions in the UK in the past decade.

It's also part of the reason why we decided to ask four Sussex families to collect their own packaging waste for an entire month, as an experiment to see not only what they generated, but whether they really wanted as much packaging, and for the same reasons as the manufacturers and retailers like to claim. After all, there's nothing quite like having your photo taken with an entire month's packaging waste at your feet, to give you a fresh perspective.

Unsurprisingly, parts of the packaging industry are on the defensive. It's not always easy to speak to packaging representatives, particularly about plastics. You can't, for example, just phone up for a chat about the amount of oil used to make a ketchup bottle lid (a Heinz 'stay clean cap' uses 14.4g of oil as opposed to 3.8g for a normal lid), but must rather submit your questions, negotiate with a variety of press officers and then endure a rather tense conference call with a CEO and his or her advisors coughing at strategic points. This is hardly surprising. Plastics in particular is a multi-billion pound industry: the advice Dustin Hoffman's character Benjamin receives in The Graduate - 'There's a great future in plastics' - still seems to hold true in fiscal terms. Now it's just environmentally contentious.

To be fair, some manufacturers also seem genuinely perplexed that the consumer might have a problem with the way their goods are packaged in a hygienic, cost-effective way that enables them to get pretty much whatever consumable their heart desires, from anywhere in the world. They think we're ungrateful. Packaging, they contend, continues to be the 'skin of commerce', it protects at least 10 times its own weight of goods and around 63 per cent of our packaging waste is now recovered and recycled.

Jane Bickerstaff, who runs INCPEN, the Industry Council for Packaging and the Environment, doesn't have much time for the idea of banning plastic carrier bags either: 'Then you're getting to the idea that you might as well ban all choice in society. You might as well ban all cars that have sun roofs or extra features and just have the basic model.' This is the first time I've heard the right to a free plastic bag compared to the right to convertibles. 'Banning plastic bags is going too far and in Ireland, where there's a levy. it's interesting environmentally, because it looks as if that levy has had a detrimental effects - simply because people don't have a thin bag to use as a bin liner, so they're buying tailor-made bin liners with much more plastic in them.' Elsewhere, it should be said that Ireland's levy on plastic bags has been credited with reducing plastic bag use by 90 per cent, and in a world that uses 750bn oil-derived carrier bags each year, surely it's worth a try?

A visit to Valpak, the company that regulates packaging recycling, where four members of staff spend three days painstakingly weighing every component of our families' packaging waste, convinces me it probably is. Sifting through sacks and sacks of packaging waste, they document each lid, rivet and cardboard fold, separating 1,015 different products and 352 different brands so that our eco scientists can assess the true impact of this nation's packaging habit. As it transpires, we consumers don't know the half of it.

This is because, in order to get a clear picture of the respective and combined impacts of plastic, glass, aluminium and other packaging materials, you also need to add on the materials' ecological rucksack, or 'overburden' - the hidden waste that the consumer never sees. Essentially, this factors in the earth ore, rubble and other waste generated in the extraction and processing operations. In the case of aluminium cans, for example, it requires our eco analysts to take into account all the energy used from the raw material to the product, including the extraction of alumina from the ground. In real terms, this means the actual waste caused by packaging in the UK is more in the region of 10m tonnes a year, and growing, at nearly three per cent.

Recycling rates are growing too, and in order to meet upcoming European waste directives, based on weight, consumers need to be encouraged to recycle even more. But it's only part of the answer; an increase in recycling has all but been negated by an increase in consumerism, thanks to a surge in single households and a continued upward trajectory in the amount we buy. When Valpak employees aren't weighing our families' ketchup bottles, they are busy presiding over a complex European packaging compliance scheme that affects the way we consumers recycle. If you struggle to understand aggregate scoring systems for European football, for instance, it is virtually unfathomable.

Terry Robins, a packaging technologist now working on biodegradable materials with Stanelco, claims that 'the recycling packaging system is so complex it wouldn't exist without spreadsheets.' But he reserves his real censure for faux-environmentally friendly packaging: 'I find some of the packaging out there at the moment abhorrent, disgusting, totally disgraceful and a complete con,' he says. 'The average consumer doesn't know the difference between degradable and biodegradable, so they think when the major supermarkets start giving out 100 per cent degradable packaging that that is the environmental answer.' Turns out it isn't. Degradable packaging disappointingly uses ordinary fossil fuels, with all that environmental baggage. 'Furthermore,' Robins continues, 'they put cobalt steroid in it - not a heavy metal, OK, but nevertheless you don't want it going into plastic bags, then landfill, then finishing up as a concentrate in an area. Neither do you want this stuff going into recycling where it messes up the system.' Biodegradable packaging, however, is a different matter: 'This is material that bacteria will eat and which ends up as water vapour and a little material that mulches down and saves the Irish peat bog. Not only does it degrade, but it contributes something.'

In a world where one drink carton might have five different laminates, it quickly became clear from our families that recycling is a mind boggling issues for the consumers, too. Rob Holdway, director of Giraffe Innovation and an eco-design expert, is busy deconstructing a Dairylea lunch pack. Millions of children are becoming increasingly familiar with this product, and it is not for us to speculate how many similar packs will be dumped around playgrounds, contributing to the £39m playground clean-up bill. 'Apart from the nutritional value, which I can't comment on,' Holdway says, 'there's a polyethylene sealant on top as a barrier film heat-sealed on to the plastic base, which shows the number 7, meaning "other" plastic, in this case a composite which is difficult to recycle. Then there's a compartment for the formed ham, which is half full, and a larger compartment, which is a third air, and contains a vacuum-packed breadstick and cheese in a polyethylene film of unmarked plastic. I would say this packaging is unlikely to be recycled,' he concludes. At least one of our families singled it out as being 'outrageously overpackaged'.

Although many people feel strongly about packaging from an environmental point of view, few can tell you about their favourite examples full of sustainable promise. Holdway has two. One is the classic WOBO Heineken bottle, designed so that once finished it can be used as a brick - a classic example of upcycling. His second is the current Evian bottle: 'When you dispose of your ketchup bottle, you can't reduce the volume, so at some stage the lorry comes to pick this up and ends up transporting air. At Evian the way they've structured the flutes and the way they've webbed the outside of the bottle means the consumer can easily compress it. It's good branding, too,' he says. 'They've reduced the materials by redesigning the flute, but managed to give it an iceberg shape which conveys the meaning. Every aspect performs a function, giving strength and rigidity to the bottle, and you can crush it at the end of its life. I'd class that as brilliant eco design.'

Arguably, it's exactly the sort of design that's urgently needed if we're going to avoid swimming about in our own cast-off packaging, and if the 13 major retailers signed up to the Courtauld Commitment (including coconut purveyors Morrisons) are to meet their targets to reduce packaging waste by March 2010.

Altogether, our families collected 103.97kg of rubbish. Adding the 'overburden' or 'rucksack', this rises to 200.09kg, an amount they all found alarming. 'It's really a challenge to stop these figures going any higher,' says Dr Richard Swannell, from Wrap (the waste resources action programme), 'especially when the trends in the sector show more of us living by ourselves, more convenience food and more purchases. Let's be really clear about this: you need to buy as simple and as little packaging as possible. If you then recycle the packaging that's helpful again, but it's the cutting down which is most helpful. As for the manufacturers, at the moment we're doing best-in-class analysis, trying to find out why one bottle of wine is in a heavier bottle than another. We've analysed the 25 heaviest products which have the biggest impact on the bin, and we estimate that we could save 200,000 tonnes of waste a year just through lightweighting those items.'

Looking at the many forms of plastic, cardboard, cans and composites spewed over the living room of one of our test families, it's not hard to spot examples of excessive packaging, brain-dead design or both. The eco designers will need all their innovative powers and cunning to reverse industry apathy and denial, and to save us from drowning in a sea of our consumerist excesses. It's not exactly reinventing the wheel, but it's about time we unwrapped it.

The families

Steve, Juliette and children

Total packaging waste collected in a month 20kg (with an ecological 'overburden' of 45kg). This translates into an energy equivalent of 197KWH - or 821 days of light bulb usage (assuming average use of a 60W bulb)

Steve's kitchen includes an aesthetically pleasing sardine tin from France which he has kept as a memento and because he likes the colour, and a cupboard full of corks. However, he's doesn't seem to have developed an emotional or artistic attachment to any of the packaging from this experiment. In fact, much of it has annoyed him. 'I've got no problems with steel or aluminium tin cans because they can easily be recycled, but what's really annoying are those things where different materials are glued together.' He cites a box for his daughter's Bratz doll, which joins plastic and cardboard. As for toothpaste dispensers with pumps: 'It's too hard for the girls to get the toothpaste out, so you end up wasting half of it.'Juliette also brings up the issue of organic produce and overpacking,citing a packet of rice in a waxed plastic packet. 'I don't think this looks particular sustainable, which kind of goes against the ethos.'

Hilary, Andrew, Maya, 4, and Samuel, 8 months

Total packaging waste: 42kg (ecological 'overburden' 76kg). Energy equivalent: 1,090 days' light bulb use

'I'm actually quite worried by the volume of plastic we've accumulated,' says Hilary. 'I would normally recycle a lot of it, including yogurt pots and food trays although I've just looked in the recycling leaflet and found out they are excluded, so I've been contaminating my recycling.' A lot of it can also be attributed to plastic bags from the family's weekly Ocado delivery, which seems to place a maximum of two items in a single carrier bag. Andrew admits that convenience takes precedence. 'If a product was marketed in such a way that you could tell that it was better for the environment than another, then I would probably go for that,' he concludes, 'but it would have to be very clearly labelled, because we're already busy concentrating on looking for low-sugar products and seeing where food's from. It's one more issue to think about.'

Lucy and Archie, 3

Total packaging waste: 27kg (ecological 'overburden' 50kg). Energy equivalent: 968 days' light bulb use

A design technology teacher, Lucy has high expectations of design and the efforts of the packaging designers that have ended up in her bin haven't impress her. 'I always thought design was supposed to be about making society better, not trying to get consumers to buy stay-clean sauce caps. I mean those kind of things really don't matter and they also have an environmental penalty, because they use more resources. I think I would actually probably pay more for environmentally sound packaging.' She also has strong views on nutrition, and tends to avoid buying anything that could be classified as 'junk food' for her son, Archie. In fact this informs most of her shopping: 'As far as I can see, most of the crap products in the shops are overpacked and often nutritionally valueless as well. They make me feel quite violent in the supermarket.' The family receives a weekly organic vegetable box and Lucy only buys non-packed English fruit. The volume of packaging from the experiment has a lot to do with Christmas, containing most of the boxes from Archie's Star Wars toys, for instance, and a 'ridiculously wrapped' Wagamama-branded china set Lucy was given as a present. In common with other families, she's not entirely sure what can be recycled in the local authority system - some plastics are a hazy area, and at the moment the biodegradable tomato trays go straight into the bin and are headed off to landfill - 'I did try composting, but I was too tight to buy a proper compost bin so used an old water butt, and it didn't quite work out,' she admits. 'Maybe I'll have another go, with a proper composter.'

Eva, Dale and Maia, 3

Total packaging waste: 16kg (ecological 'overburden' 29kg). Energy equivalent: 637 days' light bulb use

'It does look like a hell of a lot when you put it all together,' says Eva, surveying the damage that has accumulated in the family's living room. The family used to have their rubbish collected by Magpie (a co-operative waste collection business based in Brighton) which deals with most sorts of plastic, but have since started to rely on the local authority service, which is yet to offer any plastic recycling. Dale has his eye on several big plastic tubs, formerly home to hair products or lotion for his daughter's eczema, as he uses these for washing brushes in - he's a painter and decorator, and in fact he can't get enough plastic tubs because people 'nick them from work'. Eva finds the amount of plastic packaging the most shocking: 'I do go through a lot of water bottles,' she admits, 'but I hadn't realised quite how many. And there is a lot more waste from my business - I have a business selling fair-trade products on a market stall - and hadn't realised how much arrives in plastic.' Because of Maia's eczema the whole family eats carefully, including a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables which are bought loose. 'If Maia didn't have eczema we would probably have a lot more junk food and even more plastic,' admits Dale.

Watch your waste

10 packaging offenders

1. Felix pouch This is probably a laminate of three different materials and is difficult to recycle.

2. Mr Muscle Has a complex and resource-intensive trigger spray which will be thrown away with the bottle.

3. Fuji film Why do we need a plastic blister pack for this product? Wasteful and difficult to get into.

4. Easy Iron fabric conditioner Resource-intense. It could only justify its existence if it was refillable, but most manufacturers have stopped making refills.

5. Dora the Explorer toothbrush Oversized sealed plastic presentation pack with extra plastic interior - all unmarked, so impossible to tell if it's recyclable.

6. Whiskas Four material-intensive foil pouches in a polyethylene wrap, each separately branded.

7. Baby Bell cheese Wrapped in wax, with plastic layer and net bag. Could the plastic layer be shed?

8. Jaffa Cakes What was wrong with the cardboard box? Outer wrap opening up into six single portions.

9. Maltesers Plastic wrapping and foil lid - the ball shape means you will ship a lot of air in transit.

10. Coconut Shrink-wrapped despite its own natural packaging. Aluminised sticker added.