It's not just packaging, it's /everything/. Like actually /everything/.
I still beleive that the real cause of the recession is/was oil prices, and as the world/west recovers and the demand goes back up the price rises again, and it'll come back and bight us in the ass again and again.
It's not to do with oil running out per se, but to do with the maximum rate at which we can get it out of the ground. There is very little spare capacity in the system (most of the OPEC capacity is unverified and probably made up, as member quotas are based on how much oil they /say/ they have in the ground)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubbert_peak_theory
And peope here still want big cars and to consume non stop, it's just that on a widescale cultural level it hasn't reached the same level of engrained 'entitlement' to consume that seems to exist in the US (I say this entirely based on chatting to people online and your countries media output - I've never been to the US, closest I've been is Canada which seems quite similar in a lot of ways :$).
That is changing here though, each new generation seems to think it's entitled to more and more. I think I'm getting old :(