Low Impact

Here’s a challenge for you. Head down to the shops and buy yourself some dinner…but you’re not allowed to bring home any extra plastic!

Its a great way to get a sense for just how pervasive plastic products are in our everyday lifestyle. And its sobering when you realise that not only is a lot of plastic made from our ever-dwindling supplies of crude oil, but that it can persist in our environment for hundreds of years.

At first blush, it doesn’t seem too hard, right? So lets go for a little hypothetical shopping trip! Now the big trap is obviously going to be all those plastic bags you carry the shopping home in. So, you bring along one of those green carry bags, and feeling appropriately smug, head on down to your local supermarket.

A nice simple meal sounds good, so you decide on sausages, potatoes and vegetables. First stop is the sausages…but they’re all sitting on plastic trays, and shrunk wrapped with plastic film! OK, not a show-stopper, you can still pay a visit to the butchery section. Sure enough, they have loose sausages but when you tell them you’d like 4, they obligingly put it in a plastic bag for you!

Hmmm. Maybe sausages are too hard. Although its not really a balanced meal (a balanced vegetarian meal typically includes pulses and vegetables to ensure that you get all the different vitamins, minerals and proteins), perhaps you could meet this challenge by just having vegetables tonight? First stop is the potatoes. For your convenience, your local supermarket has kindly prepackaged them in 2 kg plastic bags. If you’re lucky though, you may also have the option of getting them loose.

Carrots are a similar story. Ironically, at my supermarket, you can buy loose “normal” carrots, but organically-grown carrots come pre-wrapped in a plastic bag. Cleverly designed to alienate the very customer base they’re trying to attract!

Unfortunately, you luck out on peas on your food-buying adventure. Your supermarket isn’t stocking loose peas – they only have prepared frozen peas (complete with mint flavouring), in a plastic bag.

It turns out that it’s not so easy to go shopping without bringing back some extra plastic packaging. Our hypothetical dinner of potatoes and carrots showed that, and by the end of it all, we wound up having the unappetising fare of potatoes and carrots! Part of that is because plastic is a great product for wrapping food – being watertight and airtight its great for keeping liquids in, and bacteria out! But the cost is its lasting impact on the environment.

It is possible though. Some manufacturers have got the message, so depending on your local store you may find you have a choice between pasta in a plastic bag, or recycled carboard box. A choice between pre-packaged salad greens, and loose lettuces. Your tomato sauce might come in a glass bottle, or a plastic one.

Another option is to broaden your shopping horizons. Maybe a local butcher (as opposed to the butchery section of supermarket) would be happy putting your sausages in a container you bring with you? Food co-operatives (co-ops) are another great option – they typically have all sorts of staples in bulk and expect you to bring your own re-usable containers.

Avoiding all plastic in your shopping trip is probably a bridge too far for most people. But it can be an interesting exercise that will make you think about just how much plastic we use and discard in our day-to-day lives.

Categories: environment, green, reduce

Tags: food, packaging, plastic