Excessive packaging: What can I do?

It's all well and good to whinge. After all, we are the middle class! But what can we do about excessive packaging? Here are a few simple suggestions:

1. Take your business elsewhere
   Hit the supermarkets' bottom lines, and take your business elsewhere. Visit farmers' markets and greengrocers if you can, or consider a vegetable home delivery service.



2. Leave the packaging at the supermarket counter
   In November 2006, the Environment Minister Ben Bradshaw suggested that after paying for their goods, shoppers should remove "excessive and unnecessary" wrappers and leave them behind.


3. Write to your local Trading Standards office
   The 2003 Packaging (Essential Requirements) Regulations require that "packaging shall be so manufactured that the packaging volume and weight be limited to the minimum adequate amount to maintain the necessary level of safety, hygiene and acceptance for the packed product and for the consumer". Find your local Trading Standards office using the Trading Standards central website, and write to them quoting the above regulations, and enclosing either a photograph of the excessive packaging or the packaging itself. Remember to give the name and address of the store where you saw or bought the product.
   


4. Write to the supermarkets
   Quote the 2003 Packaging Regulations, quote the company's own corporate social responsibility commitments, and send a photograph of or enclose the packaging in question.


5. Petition the Prime Minister
   This is for UK residents only, I'm afraid! There are a couple of relevant E-petitions on the Number 10 website. One calls for supermarkets to be compelled to accept packaging from their stores for disposal (sign here), whilst the other calls a code of conduct for manufacturers and importers to reduce the amount of plastic they use (sign here). If a petition gathers more than 1000 signatories, the PM's office has to write a response to it.

Please remember to be polite and reasonable in all your actions. Supermarket employees deserve to be treated with as much respect as anyone else. Don't be rude or unpleasant: there's no need, and it will only compromise your argument!

TotallyWasted.org

Organic food, inorganic packaging

We support organic food. In the UK, the Soil Association does tremendous work setting and maintaining standards for organic produce. Since January this year, they are also inspecting against new packaging standards. Producers of organic food should:

• minimise the amount of material used
• maximise the amount of material that can be reused or recycled
• use materials with recycled content where possible

Minimising the amount of material used in packaging is a topic close to our hearts. We imagine that most consumers of organic food are concerned about the environment, too. We visited some supermarkets to see how they packaged their organic products.

Here are some Co-op organic apples with the Soil Association logo. They've come all the way from Argentina to be placed in a cardboard tray and enclosed in a plastic bag. Good to see that the tray is made of recyclable cardboard, but is it really necessary at all?


These Marks and Spencer organic avocados are imported from Spain, which is relatively local by comparison. Unfortunately they've been put in a moulded plastic tray and wrapped in cellophane.


This Soil Association-certified organic babycorn has travelled all the way from Thailand by air to reach Tesco. The plastic tray they're sitting in is green, giving the impression of environmental wholesomeness.


Apparently the Soil Association packaging standards should be fully implemented from January 2008. We look forward to seeing less unnecessary packaging of organic produce by then.

TotallyWasted.org

Pampered pets, profligate packaging

We all love our pets, and want to look after them. But do they appreciate the packaging of their food? Do they really want their food to come in individually-packaged single servings, or is this just clever marketing?

We visited some supermarkets to look at pet food packaging.

Look at the spoilt cat on this tin of cat food from Sainsbury's. 85g of cat food in its very own tin. What a waste!


This dog food at Tesco also comes in individual portions, this time in thick foil trays. We wonder how many of these are washed out and recycled? Call us sceptics, but we suspect that most of them end up as landfill. Why not buy a larger tin of dog food, and use it over several days?


Apparently normal cow's milk is no longer good enough for our cats. This Felix cat milk has reduced lactose for sensitive moggies. It also comes in its own small plastic bottle.


Whether essential nutrition or marketing ploy, we don't really mind if customers want to pay extra for their pet food. We do care about the packaging, though! Well-meaning pet owners transport all this packaging home, and discard it on a regular basis. Our pets won't notice, but our environment surely will.

TotallyWasted.org

Reducing packaging waste: the Courtauld agreement

The Courtauld committment was launched in 2005 after a meeting between the Environment Minister, the Chief Executive of WRAP and 13 grocers. Here are its aims:

• To design out packaging waste growth by 2008
• To deliver absolute reductions in packaging waste by 2010
• To identify ways to tackle the problem of food waste

Tesco was one of the initial signatories, so we toured their aisles to see how well they're doing.

First stop was the vegetable aisle. Look at these courgettes! They are quite a robust vegetable - is the plastic tray and bag really necessary?


Next come the cooked meats. We were impressed at this gold tray, but it contains just one single cooked chicken breast!


Now to the baked goods. You can barely see these two pain au chocolats through the packaging:


Sorry Tesco, but we think you can do better at reducing your packaging. You have less than three years to "deliver absolute reductions in packaging waste". We at TotallyWasted.org would be happy to act as highly-paid consultants if you like.

TotallyWasted.org

Vegetables: From soil to sealed

Remember when you used to pick your own vegetables at the supermarket, put them in a plastic bag, then take them to the counter to be weighed?

Apparently this practice is not convenient, hygienic, protective or appealing enough for modern supermarkets and shoppers. The idea of putting vegetables in a plastic tray, sealing the top with plastic film and bar-coding the package is becoming more widespread. It started with 'boutique' vegetables like imported mange tout, but nowadays even the most mundane vegetable gets the over-packaging treatment. We found plenty of examples at Sainsbury's:

Mange tout offer a classic example of the tray/clingfilm treatment. We are so used to seeing mange tout like this that we don't even notice it's abnormal!


Next comes the triple: sugarsnap, babycorn and 'tenderstem', all in separate compartments. But the 'tenderstem' moniker can't hide the fact that broccoli has been cunningly elevated to 'tray/clingfilm' status. A worrying trend!


'Casserole selection pack' - what's going on here? Since when did parsnips, carrots and potatoes need the protection of a ridged plastic tray?


And here you have it: the most mundane vegetable of all gets packaged! For centuries, potatoes had made their way from field to kitchen with no more protection than their own skins. But now JS Sainsbury has felt it necessary that they be separated into pairs and safely tucked into plastic trays.


I'm sorry to say this, Mr Sainsbury, but promoting recycling does not make up for this kind of waste. Most of these unnecessary plastic trays will end up as landfill. Even those that are sorted and recycled will waste energy in manufacture, transport and recycling. Keep it simple: get rid of the packaging!

TotallyWasted.org

Excessive packaging and Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is the obligation of businesses to take account of economic, social and environmental impacts in the way they operate. The government consider CSR so important that they have assigned responsibility to a government minister, and set up a dedicated CSR website. We believe that the economic, social and environmental impacts of a single family generating 50kg of packaging a month warrant some attention from companies serious about CSR.

We surfed to nine of the UK's largest supermarkets to see what they are doing about excessive packaging in the name of CSR. We've ranked their packaging reduction progress and pledges, starting with the best, and ending with the weakest.

1. Waitrose are top of the class. They tell us they've already reduced packaging by weight both in absolute and relative terms, and that they will continue to do so. The figures are on the website. Well done, Waitrose!
2. Sainsbury's gain some credit for supplying a target: 5% reduction in packaging by 2010. What a shame that this target is "relative to turnover".
3. Asda will deliver "absolute reductions in packaging weight" by March 2010. It's a start!
4. Morrisons "are working to find innovative packaging solutions to eliminate or reduce the need for packaging". Are paper bags innovative enough, Morrisons?
5. Tesco, Britain's largest retailer, pledge to "support the principle of recovery, recycling and re-use". Aren't the green 3Rs usually given as reduce, recycle and re-use? On the plus side, Tesco are now "concentrating on other packaging reduction projects".
   
6. Marks and Spencer make a worrying start by emphasising the importance of packaging. There are no pledges, but according to their 2005 CSR report they aim to work "on packaging reduction initiatives."
   
7. Co-op Food and Somerfield both make much of biodegradable plastic bags and recycling, but make no pledges to reduce packaging.
8. Iceland have a rather sparse CSR page, which is limited to fish and whale protection. No mention of packaging here.

So congratulations to Waitrose for making progress, and to Sainsbury's and Asda for making pledges. A good beginning, but don't let complacency set in, there's a long way to go! As for the rest of the supermarkets: you must do better!

We shall go on visiting supermarkets to see what's happening to on the 'shop floor'. Remember, email the webmaster at totallywasted.org with your photos and stories of over-packaging.

TotallyWasted.org

Flesh and bones

Selling a joint of meat is all about presentation. Hermetic seals prevent oxidation of the meat's surface, keeping it red and fresh-looking. Supermarkets know this, so they have created sealed clear plastic packages. To avoid exposing consumers to unsightly meat juices, absorbent white or black pads are placed beneath the meat to soak up any residue. We recently took a look at the meat shelves of a couple of supermarkets.

Here's a classically-presented joint of beef from Somerfield, complete with pastoral scene on the label. Why's there so much empty space in the pack? Perhaps it's alluding to all the space that the cows had to roam in whilst alive.

It seems that British pigs have space to roam, too. Look at these two leg steaks from the Co-op. Could they have squeezed into a smaller package? We think so!

Marks and Spencer have come up with another classic. If you're going to spend nine pounds on two steaks, you want your money's worth in packaging, and there's no skimping here. Each steak sits in it's individual compartment of a plastic insert, all within a larger plastic tray. Note that there are thick round absorbent pads below each steak, as well as another rectangular pad lining the larger tray. No juices are going to spoil the appearance of these two fillets!

What can we do with all this packaging once the meat's been cooked? Our local council will only recycle plastic in bottle form, and they certainly don't want meat-covered plastic trays. Yes, cardboard can be recycled, but who's going to recycle a pad of coated cardboard soaked in meat juice? We're quite sure that all of this packaging is destined for landfill.

TotallyWasted.org