So Much Produce Comes in Plastic. Is There a Better Way?
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I'm ancient enough to remember that when you took your grocery list to the grocery shop, there weren't many shelves that had packets of whatever for sale. Mainly the store had a whole series of large bins: one for flour, one for sugar, another for salt, etc.
You read out the list and the man would scoop up what you had ordered and put in into a brown-paper bag.
In today's world, that business-model is too labor-intensive. Better that you buy a standardised amount of product that a machine can measure out more cheaply and more speedily than any man can. But that product now has to travel the country instead of just back to your place, so it needs more robust packaging, and that packaging needs to be labelled clearly so you know what you are buying. That entails an inner plastic, sealable bag, and a firm cardboard printed outer packaging.
Progress? Perhaps.
But these numerous little exceptions don't invalidate OP's observation, wherein: Our needs have broadly changed, and thus so has our packaging.
I have an issue with disposable plastic food containers. So obnoxious. Some processed food has more packaging than actual food. Like plastic sushi boxes with the stupid plastic grass between the pieces.
A recent plastic bottle and aluminium can tax was introduced in my country, thanx to the EU, which has led me to change my behaviour from avoid to avoid at all costs.
Scientists found microplastics in clogged arteries. Soon we won't have just high cholesterol, but also "high plastics" in our bloodstream, as if plthalates that were linked to high cholesterol were not enough.
That would definitely get us rid of shrinkflation.
Egg in plastic container with lid
Burger wrapped in 3 layers of paper and one layer of foil
Above put into plastic bag with napkins
20 mins later all in trash all of which happens 10ft from cashier.
Crazy bad
If platic reduction is that important, the primary goal should be the primary platic consumption, not useful tools to normal people that maybe contributes 1-2% and will end up pissing people off.
The green movement is really bad at convincing people because they ignore private jets for politicians that cause more environmental damage than any lifetime consumption of plastic straws ever would. The hypocrisy is unconvincing.
If one were to ask plastic straw or bag ban volunteers to go work on something else, they just... wouldn't. This would be different with employees but with volunteers there are rarely significant tradeoffs to consider.
A search engine would show that there this movement is not ignoring private jets. [1]
Lastly, perhaps this is not true of the parent commenter, but a last thing I'll note is that many people seem to believe that the, "green movement," is somehow powerful or well financed. This could not be farther from the truth.
The money most environmental orgs brings in from donations is dwarfed by what those same donors pay for gasoline, red meat, and other environmentally harmful products. Some percentage of these purchases is then funneled to fighting the causes that they just donated to. (Dear child commenters, I'm not shaming you for eating meat or buying gas. I also live in a society...)
That’s the, "green movement." We're out-gunned, under-financed, and, due to those constraints, almost impossible to coordinate. I personally am currently struggling to figure out how to afford per-seat pricing of password managers for my team of 5-10 hr/week volunteers. THAT is the level of shoestring budget that this movement is on.
Perhaps it’s counter-intuitive, but if you’d like to see a more coordinated environmental movement capable of weighing tradeoffs and focusing on big issues over plastic straw bans, I’d suggest donating, not just once, but repeatedly. Otherwise, the fundamental dynamics of volunteer based orgs just won’t change.
[1]: https://www.google.com/search?q=environmentalists+block+jets
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/the-last-straw-footage-of...
I'm not sure if people are intentionally misrepresenting this, but it wasn't about the total amount of plastic used or climate change.
It's more similar to the old can ring plastic that became a meme for it's danger to wildlife.
The old pic of a sea turtle with a deformed shell with a new-looking 6-pack rings around it convinced me to tear apart those rings for more than a decade, then someone pointed out how new the 6-pack rings looked and I felt like an idiot. I learned never to trust enviromentalists.
Paper has it's downsides too, but they are surmountable. Plastic has no path forward at this stage. Recycling and incineration are not ideal for plastic, and you can't trust the general population with that task anyway.
Recycling is a cop out for big corps to keep pushing plastic into the environment. We need their products to live, but only they can choose to stop using plastic. Voting with our wallets is hampered by the reduced comptition from corporate amalgamation of staple grocery companies.
You can't call it a capital M monopoly, but the effect seems to be the same. The evidence is on the store shelves, even though the public clearly wants less plastic, no change.
Those are two pretty big "ifs" - people can be inclined to satisfice and pat themselves on the back for having done some minor symbolic thing, and then not go deeper. And it's much easier to sacrifice plastic straws than question whether your "bucket list" should really have a ton of carbon intensive global travel.
All we need is a seemingly copacetic catch phrase to bring the ocean-dumping not-recyclers into the light.
"Scamcycling"?
I can use my own bags for produce and my own containers for a massive range of items sold in bulk (flour, grains, nuts, cereal, pasta to name a few). And then a few others that I have not seen elsewhere: I can fill up my own bottles with shampoos, detergents and oils!
Various cities around the West Coast and Austin also have co-op grocery stores, but Berkeley Bowl takes it to a different hypermart level while retaining a flavor reminiscent of Whole Earth Access.
And, honestly, even the Whole Foods (Amazon) flagship HQ store is a disgrace and a disaster: they don't sell any form of pita or lavash bread of any sort and half of their bulk bins are completely empty as of writing. This is a consequence of corporate bean counters who optimize for the wrong things. They were supposedly once a boutique bougie grocery store patterned after Italian grocers but instead developed into conspicuous consumption of pseudo luxury by anyone who drives an Audi or BMW.