supermarkets and packaging

[muddy boots]

Sort of on the same theme, was absolutely aghast this year when Tesco's Jersey Royals were only available in prepacked plastic containers-was flabbergasted!  Also, they were going rotten and you couldn't see!

Mind you, although for years, Tesco have been my main grocery shopping venue, they keep withdrawing all the things that I really want to buy from supermarket.  Wonder if it's anything to do with the fact that they think they are the new Bill Gates rival  ???  Shoppers go sing - we've got bigger fish to fry!  >:( >:(

[muddy boots]

[Melbourne12]

I’m going sound a bit of a dissident note here.  I don’t believe that the food industry and the big retailers DO over-package.  Indeed, packaging is so expensive that they have every incentive not to.

Back in the “good old days” when packaging and transport weren’t so effective, I’ve often seen whole lorry-loads of food destroyed.  Literally 20 or 30 tons at a time dumped and sprayed with dye under the watchful eye of a health officer because it hadn’t arrived at its destination in good enough shape.

In a world where so many are starving, that’s unacceptable.  I’m sure it still happens, but to nothing like the same extent.  Sensible packaging cuts down on waste, not increases it.

I’m also old enough to remember the old-fashioned grocers shops that we just wouldn’t tolerate today.  Slightly stale biscuits in a tin, a fair percentage of them broken.  Bins of flour of who-knew-what vintage.  A cat asleep on the sack of sugar.

I looked up www.wasteonline.org.uk   Their statistics show a mere 3% of household waste comes from plastic film â€" the sort that is frequently not recycled.  Looking at packaging waste, another 3% is metal packaging (cans and foil), the vast majority of which is recycled.  4% is “dense plastic” (presumably mainly plastic bottles and pots, all recyclable), 7% is glass (bottles and jars, recyclable), and 18% is paper and board, although that figure includes much more than paper packaging.

So we’re looking at perhaps 3% to 4% of household waste that’s attributable to packaging and not recycled, although with more effort even that relatively small amount could be.

Even if you believe that it’s a fair swap to increase the amount of wasted food by tonnes in order to decrease the amount of packaging by kilos, remember also that the food has incurred heavy environmental costs in its transport, and you’re throwing away “food miles” too.

[muddy boots]

Just look at how much our farmers in Kent are given as an incentive to not recycle their waste apples, etc., still!  Those days of dying and scrapping are still here ???

[LILACSPLASH]

I think that is a great idea!

Today I didn't put my loose fruit and veg into the little plastic bags they give you in tesco. Got some funny looks at the checkout, but I didn't care!

I am going to try to reuse bags as well - forgot to take any old ones today so had to use new plastic bags. Naughty me!

don't put veg into a bag at the local coop used to get funny looks until I expained why now they just try to pyramid the carrots on the scales instead. any carriers gat recycled into dog poo bags. I try not to let anything go to waste in our house and buy the lowest ionic surfactants that will do the job, thick bleach is a definate no no and I'm trying to tell a close reletive that at the moment... >:(

[Moggle]

I wish I was brave enough to leave all that packaging at the checkout.

I now have a vegbox delivered (had to give up lottie) which uses minimal packaging, and their placcy bags say they are degradeable. I rinse them out and re-use some of them too. All arrives in a re-useable cardboard box, which they collect the next week.

In the shops I do my best to go for the loose fruit and veg, I don't think I've used a bag there for ages. I try to take at least a couple of canvas/calico bags with me on each shopping trip (2 of us so we don't always buy that much) and also buy a lot of bits and pieces on my way home so I just bung it in my rucksack.

I prefer the self-serve tills for avoiding plastic bags, then no one looks at you funny. I got some really funny looks in M&S when I've asked them to put my jumper/skirt/tshirts/whatever in to my calico bags.

A couple of my bags came free from the council, and a couple came from Culpepper herbs - £2 each and better quality than the freebies.

Oh and oddbins sell re-useable 6-bottle synthetic fabric carriers - that gets used a couple of times a week too  :P

[southernsteve]

We have all become conditioned by the supermarkets to accept the tasteless rubbish thats transported around the world. If they were to use fruit and veg in season in this country instead of insisting we get pears and apples etc. from South Africa and god knows where else, they could then cut down on all that packaging. They only sell the high yield, cheap tat so they can make a decent profit, and of course get it from overseas so they can pay the poor farmer next to nothing for it. Why have we got so many farms in this country going out of business or having fields set aside. This summer you could not get English Tomatoes in my local Tesco, or English Conference Pears, or Strawberries, shall I go on, both available from our local farm shop. The rubbish they do sell goes off within days. I now only buy fruit and veg from the local farm shop. It might cost slightly more, and thats debatable, but at least it lasts more than a couple of days, you normally get a choice of variety, and most important, if its in season it's British!!! And hopefully from next year I'll have enough of the lottie to keep me going.

As for the leaving the packaging at the checkout, go for it. My wife won't take me shopping anymore because of the moaning I do. It was good fun in Tesco's when she produced her half dozen or so heavy duty M&S bags to put all the shopping in. As for Tesco's carriers, how the hell they expect you to use them more than once I don't know. Whenever I have been shopping , I've been lucky to get them home in one piece they are so flimsy. Usually the one with the booze in goes first!

[Melbourne12]

I'm genuinely puzzled here.  A wholesale box used for apples from Kent or Worcestershire looks just the same to me as the sort of box used to carry apples from New Zealand.  Same thickness and construction, same layers of styrofoam to keep the apples from bruising.  Can someone explain the difference?

And every supermarket that I've shopped in this year had English (and indeed Scottish) strawberries in season.  I didn't buy the entire stock, honest.  Surely someone else must also have seen them!

And, coincidentally, I went into a Tesco in Trowbridge last night.  The ladies at the checkout made a point of asking every customer whether they had brought their own bags for their shopping, and I felt rather guilty that I had not.

[Shirley]

B & Q have stopped automatically putting items into bags.  They are now charging if you want a bag; it's amazing how quickly you can do without a bag when it is not free!