Redundant recycling

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

You could take a washable plastic container with you or perhaps reusable plastic bags, (we've got some but they're a bit of a faff to clean).

Many years back there was a supermarket round here (Food Giant) which used to e.g. sell cornflakes by weight and encouraged people to bring their own containers in - though it was probably driven by cost margins rather than environmental concern.

[ad hoc]

Reusing is recycling, surely? (I mean of a sort anyway. A better sort, in fact)

[WOM]

Knowing consumers as I do, I have roughly 2% faith in the idea that people will adopt reusable containers in place of packaging. It's hard enough to get people to adopt canvas / reusable grocery bags. Now imagine them purchasing, washing, and taking refillable containers to the store? And then at the store end, the issue of dispensing bulk product, weighing and pricing it, spillage / mess, cross-contamination, etc. Good grief. Dead on arrival.

[Stumpy Pepys]

Knowing consumers as I do, I have roughly 2% faith in the idea that people will adopt reusable containers in place of packaging. It's hard enough to get people to adopt canvas / reusable grocery bags. Now imagine them purchasing, washing, and taking refillable containers to the store? And then at the store end, the issue of dispensing bulk product, weighing and pricing it, spillage / mess, cross-contamination, etc. Good grief. Dead on arrival.

Then don't give them the choice. They'll get used to it.

You're right in that it will necessitate changes to supermarkets and taking on more staff.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Which is why you need to legislate and force companies to do better.

[WOM]

I'm more with TonTon on this than with Stumpy. Mandating 100% recyclability rules / laws is the only way to go. Outlawing plastic water bottles would also be an great first step.

[Stumpy Pepys]

I'm more with TonTon on this than with Stumpy. Mandating 100% recyclability rules / laws is the only way to go. Outlawing plastic water bottles would also be an great first step.

So what's the answer to my sausage question?

[ad hoc]

Like with plastic bags, they sell you a re-useable container to take the sausages home in

[Capybara]

Which is why you need to legislate and force companies to do better.

Yes, legislation is vital. 'Nudging' isn't enough. For a while I was responsible for acquiring our corporately-branded tat. Our plastic carrier bags were very popular. We were a reasonably ethical organisation and when I took on this as part of my job nearly twenty years ago we looked into procuring something more environmentally friendly. We found that biodegradable plastic bags were available but, in the quantities we needed to justify the unit cost we could pay, we knew that we would lose a significant quantity to decomposition before we could use them. So we looked at paper ones, paper being one of the few widely-recyclable commodities at the time. Branded paper bags were at the time almost by an order of magnitude more costly than what we were currently buying. So we stuck with plastic bags. Twenty-odd years later, things are better but there's the problem. It's taken nearly twenty years and an Attenborough documentary to get there and even then we are only 'discouraged' from using plastic bags while packaging remains a big issue that's barely been tackled. Governments need to show a bit of vision, take responsibility and legislate (yeah, I know).

[Stumpy Pepys]

Like with plastic bags, they sell you a re-useable container to take the sausages home in

Which WOM is saying won't work.

[Nocturnal Submission]

There is a fair bit of this going on already. I think Mrs. NS might take a container along when she buys fresh fish from Waitrose, which is currently doing this: https://www.waitrose.com/ecom/shop/f...eries/unpacked

[WOM]

Which WOM is saying won't work.

No, I understand how it's intended to work. I get the concept. I truly do. But, from what I've seen in uptake of recyclable bag usage alone, the idea that these same people will now purchase, use, wash, store, remember to take and then refill myriad containers for their margarine, sausages, corn flakes, flour, etc etc etc is utterly laughable. And that's just with consumer end of things.

On the other end, you have - picture this - all the different brands of cereal in the cereal aisle. And now each of those brands has a dispenser of some kind, with a spout at one end and a refillable (presumably) hopper up top, and then there are weigh scales and pencils so you can tare your container and then weigh the product and record the weight. Basically, a bulk bin food store, times 1000.

I swear to you on all things holy, this will never work.

[WOM]

As for the string bags for produce, sure. Maybe that will work. Probably does to a small degree already. The places around here seem to be shifting to these weirdly textured compostable bags already, which you can then put your green scraps in.

[Capybara]

There is a fair bit of this going on already. I think Mrs. NS might take a container along when she buys fresh fish from Waitrose, which is currently doing this: https://www.waitrose.com/ecom/shop/f...eries/unpacked

Yes, this was starting to become a thing, but I guess the pandemic hasn't helped.

[WOM]

Our big bulk food chain switched to an accompanied-shopper model so that people wouldn't be in as much contact with the bin lids and scoops and whatnot. Drove my wife nuts. "I don't want to walk around telling some girl to 'give me two scoops of that and a half scoop of this' ". Fortunately it's gone back to the old way, with a much firmer finger-wagging when you walk in.

[Amor de Cosmos]

So what's the answer to my sausage question?

Sausages in our local store are sold over the meat counter and wrapped in paper, like fish. They also sell them off the shelf in plastic and polystyrene. That makes it a consumer choice I guess, which, it seems to me, is the minimal retailers should do.

[ursus arctos]

Same here with markets that have an attended meat counter, though the default is that the paper wrapped package will be put in a plastic bag before being handed to the customer.

The range of "behind the counter" and "on the shelf" items is also far from identical

[WOM]

So what's the answer to my sausage question?

Sorry. I didn't see this, Stumpy.

Yeah, paper as Amor says, I guess. Meat's a funny one; with blood and oils, you want it to be non-absorbent. But non-absorbent tends to mean non-recyclable, which is why take-out coffee cups are such a bastard to deal with.

[WOM]

As ua says, butchers behind the counter in mass-market grocery stores are virtually non-existent, so sausage are shrink-wrapped for display and purchase.

Styrofoam trays are now recyclable here, but any type of film wrap goes straight into the garbage

[Amor de Cosmos]

As for the string bags for produce, sure. Maybe that will work. Probably does to a small degree already. The places around here seem to be shifting to these weirdly textured compostable bags already, which you can then put your green scraps in.

We've been told by our municipality not to use those to put veggie/fruit scraps in the green bin. No reason given. This is the core of the problem, local governments have the time and personnel to come up with increasingly complicated, but well intentioned, rules for separating garbage that are passed on to us. At the other end of the food chain producers don't seem to be under any regulations at all as to how they package and market their products. This is wrong, for reasons so obvious they shouldn't need to be enumerated here.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Same here with markets that have an attended meat counter, though the default is that the paper wrapped package will be put in a plastic bag before being handed to the customer.

We are asked at checkout if we want a plastic bag. Which is fine.

[ursus arctos]

Here, the "butcher" will put the paper wrapped package in a plastic bag before handing it over the counter unless you actively tell him/her that you don't want one.

Such bags don't incur the "plastic bag fee" that applies to the carrier bags available at checkout (nor do those used for produce, bulk foods, etc)