I've been involved in a consultation group - older people and the environment - which is just coming to an end this month. Packaging and waste was a hot topic. We had the packaging buyer from M&S along as a speaker. He had facts and figures from his company as well as others. Food wise, we are not likely to loose the plastic packaging as this extends the shelf life of of food products and reduces wastage (example was the Co-op naked cucumber where they are now throwing away more items which are not sold). So that is the basic answer to the question of food wrapping. Also noted was the fact that more older people are living alone and eating ready meals for convenience so they are producing more waste.Andy Hamilton wrote:Would be good to formulate some kind of action to reduce packaging. Not sure what it would entail, lobbying governmental bodies - yes of course. Lobbying individual companies, well we can at least ask them why they use so much - perhaps we could have a name and shame system somewhere on the site.
Obviously the main culprit is us the shopper in that we have not supported the small independent retailers who use less packaging so they have now mainly disappeared from the shopping scene. This leaves us with the larger stores who deal in convenience, pile it high and (supposedly) sell it cheap. Be it on our own heads that we now have a problem with our rubbish.