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Comment by mirimir | Hacker News Reader

It's appalling how much many containers (plastic, waxed paper, and multiple-layer) and how much packaging we go through every week. We get some bulk food from the local coop. And in the summer, we buy from farmers' markets.

But there's no practical way to buy milk, ice cream, detergent for dishes and clothes, prescription drugs, etc. So I end up saving containers, thinking that I'll find some use for them. But it's pretty hopeless.

So yes, I'd say that we need regulations.

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We can still get milk delivered in glass bottles here. But everything else I agree is pretty impossible to avoid plastic.

Hell, I even saw some fruit, fruit, in plastic containers at the supermarket. I guess to stop it getting bashed. It was peaches.

This drives me bonkers. Tomatoes in little plastic crates, bananas is plastic bags, (bananas come with their own really great packaging! Why the hell do they put them in bags?!) cellophane-wrapped cucumbers. My previous employer got Fresh Direct shipments frequently, and the blackberries, raspberries, etc. came packaged in Russian doll nested plastic crates. Made my head explode.

"a wrapped cucumber lasts more than three times as long as an unwrapped one"

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/feat...

So just eat the cucumber earlier and shop more often/local?

Compared to destroying the environment sounds like a bargain!

And the cucumber will just decompose back into the environment if disposed as trash, too.

That is why I refuse to bag large fruits in their own plastic bags. My shopping cart always has apples, peaches, pears and bananas loose in the cart. Its a slight hassle during checkout but to me its worth it.

> cellophane-wrapped cucumbers

That wouldn’t be actually all too bad: Cellulose is made out of wood, cotton, hemp or other natural materials and is fully biodegradable. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellophane

FWIW, we have a local market/co-op type thing where you can bring your containers to be filled with laundry detergent, various liquid soaps, and similar products. I wish this type of thing was more popular.

Maybe our local coop does that. I don't recall seeing it, but I'll ask.

One of the things that I liked about Mexico was the survival, at least in the sleepy little city I lived in, of old-school commerce. Market places, of course. But also stores where customers were expected to supply their own "packaging". A milk store, where you got milk in a 1L plastic bag, if you didn't bring your own container.

They have stores which only sell milk?

This was in small towns. So yes, there was a milk store. Which sold milk that people delivered directly from their farms. Not pasteurized. You were supposed to boil it at home.

Also a coffee store, which also bought directly from farms. And a bakery, with wood-fired ovens. Plus many other small stores.

And then, an hour away by motor vehicle, was a Walmart. Stuff was so inexpensive there that many local stores resold stuff that they bought there.

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