The battle against packaging waste

Reducing packaging is the latest ethical issue concerning conscientious consumers, but how hard is it to cut back on cartons? Charlie Cottrell watches her waste…

Consumers with a conscience have food packaging in their sights. This year everything from Easter eggs to egg fried rice has had its cardboard cut out, in a bid to minimise the mountains of waste we create just by buying food.

For the next week I will be trying to reduce my food packaging waste by keeping a close eye on what I buy. To get an idea of the challenge ahead, I kept hold of all the packaging I amassed with one week’s typical shop. I think of myself as a pretty switched-on consumer so it was a shock to see, sitting boldly on the kitchen table, undeniable evidence of how much rubbish I really produce.

“Hold on,” you’re probably thinking, “you can probably recycle most of that junk.” Think again optimistic one, a quick scan of the offending articles revealed 11 non-recyclable packets, with the berries I tuck into as my first way to 5 a day proving the biggest packaging pests.

Steeled by this revelation, I’ll be going less wild in the aisles in an attempt to cut back on cartons and starve my bin of packaging nasties.

Day 1
First shop of the new regime and it turns out keeping packaging to a limit is not going to be easy. Breakfast is looking decidedly less healthy as all the store’s berries come in plastic boxes. In fact, the whole fruit and veg aisle is a festival of plastic. There is not a single organic vegetable that doesn’t come wrapped in a plastic bag. Tomatoes, courgettes, lemons and limes are loose. This could make for an interesting dinner.

Day 2
Busy day in the office means it’s a grab and go sarnie from the high street for lunch. Chucked the packet without thinking, then forced to fish it out from the bin to salvage the recyclable parts. Eew.

Day 3
Not all plastics are created equal it seems, nor are all recycling schemes. Some councils will take your plastics and give them a new life but others might not. Happily mine does. That in mind I bought some strawberries with a clearer conscience – but while the plastic box is recyclable, the label isn’t. The label. It’s not an easy peeler either so I leave it in my (yuk) dirty dish water to soak overnight – no point wasting water. By morning it still won’t budge so I spend an hour attacking it with a knife. There’s a lot of sticky residue which makes it tough to know whether or not it can legitimately go in the recycling bin. Will a whole slab of plastic really end up in a landfill because of a leaf of gummed paper?

Day 4
Hurrah for the market – loose cherries! In the supermarket the fresh-veggies-in-plastic situation is still so grim I head for the frozen aisle. The packet on my broad beans says, in the standard rubbish disposal system, it will break down in four years as opposed to 10,000 years for a regular plastic bag, so that’s a boon.

Day 5
I can’t hack the lack of fruit and veg so I’m abandoning chemical-free-but-plastic-wrapped organic for possibly-insecticide-heavy-but-packaging-light standard veggies. To avoid using the little plastic bags I usually pop veggies into to take to the till, I carry them loose in the basket and hit the self-checkout where I can weigh them and then carry home in a re-usable bag. Semi-success! My fridge is better stocked than it’s been all week and not a single bit of plastic made it into my house.

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