It’s easy when we go shopping to just pick up the food and pop it in the trolley, and think no more about it, but what are we really buying, and what are we paying for?

Apples don’t need to come pre-packed in a polystyrene container wrapped in cellophane for example, there’s just no need for it. Apples store perfectly well loose and can be brought to the supermarket in large trays or crates and then sold to us loose so we can choose how many we want, there’s no need for this excess packaging, and all it’s really doing is adding to the cost – both in terms of what we spend in cash (packaging costs money!), and in terms of the cost of what we have to throw away at the end of the day when we’ve eaten the apples.

In this country we throw away over 400 million tonnes of rubbish every year, and of that rubbish a very large percentage of it is the packaging from our weekly food shopping bought in supermarkets.

In the past, even in my childhood (and I’m only mid 30’s), if you wandered around the smaller shops, you would often come across somewhere that sold things by the scoop full. Large barrels full of rice, pulses, nuts and so on which you could buy loose either by scoop or by weight. Greengrocers had vegetables & fruit displayed loose in boxes in their shops and you picked out your own, paid for them, popped them in your bag and took them away – the most packaging you’d be given would be a carrier bag or some paper bags to keep things separate. I haven’t seen a shop like this in a good few years, perhaps we need to petition these local shops to bring back this style of shopping!

Recycling is ok – a darn sight better than putting all those cans and bottles and so on into landfill, but reduction of waste has to be better still surely? Particularly when you can read in the news about how we’re shipping our recycling out to other countries because we just don’t have the facilities here to meet the demand. In 2008 if we continue as we are, we are going to run out of landfill sites in the UK – this means we will have to start creating new ones and destroying more of our landscape and countryside. Some supermarkets have signed up to the courtauld agreement which means they’re agreeing to start trying to reduce packaging waste by 2010, to my mind however, this just isn’t good enough if we’re going to run out of landfill sites 2 whole years earlier!

So what can WE the individuals do about this.

The first thing I’d suggest is to write letters to your local supermarkets (as many as you can) asking them what they are doing to help reduce unnecessary packaging on products. From there, you can choose your strategy based on what they come back with.

Hold a ‘strip off’ at a supermarket – no I don’t mean go along and bear your all to everyone, I mean invite people locally to join you on a particular day at a particular shop to do their shopping, and when you all go through the tills, strip off every single bit of unnecessary packaging and leave it there for the supermarket to deal with, you don’t need cereal to be in a bag AND a box, ready meals don’t need to have a cardboard sleeve round them – what’s wrong with just printing the information on the plastic. Some freecycle groups have a ‘café’ section where you can talk about things or ask questions not just offer items for recycling, a group like this may well be a good place to find like minded people. You may well find there are quite a lot of them too! Other local groups you could talk to are the WI, mums and toddler groups and in fact any other group of people you can think of including your neighbours and friends. (If you can get the local press involved even better!).

Write to your MP – tell him/her that you are unhappy about the amount of packaging you have to deal with, and tell him that you don’t think the government is being strict enough with manufacturers or retailers in making them reduce the packaging.

If you can’t find a group of like minded people to join you in a strip off there is nothing to stop you from leaving behind your own packaging when you shop. Or refusing to buy items which come with too much packaging. When I buy fruit and veg, I buy it loose if I possibly can, I try to pick items that have been produced locally and I don’t use the supermarkets plastic bags to put things in. Items like apples, leeks, swede, broccoli and potatoes I just pop into my basket or trolley loose, tomatoes, mushrooms or other softer items I use their mushroom bags for – those at least are made from paper not plastic so I can compost them!

If all else fails and you can’t get your supermarket to change – boycott them! But do make sure you write and tell them why you are doing so.

Perhaps you can go back to shopping on the market for your veg, or getting a box delivered from a local farm, at least with this second one, you can return the box when you get the next delivery, most everything will be loose in the box, and you’ll know your fruit and vegetables were produced locally and hasn’t travelled ridiculous distances to reach your plate either. And remember how I mentioned petitioning local shops to bring back the ability to buy by the scoopful, don’t forget that’s worth a try too. If they know that you are going to buy from them then they might be willing to try it.

The overall aim of not having so much packaging will help your pocket as well as the planet – if companies don’t have to put so much packaging on there it will cost less to produce the food. If you don’t have so much rubbish and recycling to put out each week, your council won’t have to charge you as much in your council tax bill for your rubbish collection!

by Vialdana