Casual Observation: The Whole Package?

I will be honest, I am a complete sucker for cute packaging, and I have been totally known to buy products I didn't need simply because they came in a cute container. (Mints or candy in vintage-looking metal boxes tend to be the most appealing. Especially while standing in the checkout line at Trader Joe's.)

But I am also a committed recycler and environmentalist so when I recently opened up a new container of a product I actually do need, I was horrified to see the following (shown here both with and without a penny so you can get an ideal of the scale you are seeing):

That huge wad of cotton is needed to fill up the bottle because the actual pills don't even cover the whole bottom of the bottle, let alone fill the bottle to the top.  Additionally, there is the wasted cardboard box, which is slightly more than twice the size of the actual bottle it is holding (presumably to accommodate the security device?).

So who is the guilty culprit? Well, I hate to admit it because I love this product, but the guilty party is:

Now I am all for getting 60 pills for the price of 45 (especially during the late summer and autumn), but I would love even more for these guys to come up with some product packaging that would make more sense size-wise for what they are selling. If they don't want to sell the pills in a pop-through wrapper, why not try selling them in a smaller tube bottle, like the one used on the product below?

image from drugstore.com

The good thing is that I can (and will) put the plastic bottle and cardboard out for collection in the recycling bucket, but wouldn't it be better if someone at the company was thinking proactively and could come up with a more environmental way to sell this product? They spend loads on advertising; why not spend some on reinventing the packaging for long term impact?

It would make me an even bigger fan than I already am.