The 52 week bin bag

[Shirley]

If I buy loose veg at the co-op I don't put it into a bag and they don't try to do it for me at the check out now either :D

I can't wait to be able to pop outside into the garden and pick my own veg without having to drive to the shop - that's what I call true zero waste packaging :D

[johnhcrf]

Loose veg is ace. Try to got the supermarket for 5lb spuds, 2lb carrots, 2lb sprouts. See the chaos at the checkout. If 5 of us did this it would stop checkout for hours!
Supermarkets depend on packaging for quick throughput at checkout. They need a replacement ZWP setup.

John.

[red]

my local co-op has a sign up in the fruit and veg section suggesting you dont need a bag. i buy stuff loose.

Also another shop in village has paper bags for putting fruit and veg in. can compost those.

[johnhcrf]

Red, there are no problems with local shops. The big, ginormous problem is the superstore. They are the biggest contributor to home bin waste and they will find it difficult to change. It is so bad that their top bosses do not understand the consumer's wish to improve the waste situation. They do not have a clue!

John.

[red]

well simple then. dont go to the superstore.

[johnhcrf]

In the ideal world local would be king. However, supermarkets give us bigger choice, cheaper prices, jobs etc. We need them but they have to change. The vicious chain from supplier to landfill must end

John.

[multiveg]

I remember watching (or was it hearing!) a programme on packaging. Shoppers in Germany would, after the checkout, strip items of their packaging and leave the packaging at the supermarket.

As for loose fruit/veg, the supermarkets used to have weighing machines that customers could use and print out the price of their items.

[johnhcrf]

De-packaging still produces landfill. Home bin waste reduction is a first step in the long march to total waste reduction.
Old practices like paying at the fruit/veg counter would be welcome. Fish/Meat is a problem. They cannot be unpackaged and if consumers use plastic boxes who is to blame if the fish/meat is off?

John

[multiveg]

De-packaging still produces landfill. Home bin waste reduction is a first step in the long march to total waste reduction.
Old practices like paying at the fruit/veg counter would be welcome. Fish/Meat is a problem. They cannot be unpackaged and if consumers use plastic boxes who is to blame if the fish/meat is off?

John

Yes, but it would then be up to the supermarket to sort it and perhaps it would give them an incentive to reduce packaging. I think that the German supermarkets had recycling bins for the different types of packaging, but can't remember.

[red]

De-packaging still produces landfill. Home bin waste reduction is a first step in the long march to total waste reduction.

John

yeh but the point is to make a point AT the supermarket so they change their ways. the other method to change their ways to to shop elsewhere

[ina]

However, supermarkets give us bigger choice, cheaper prices, jobs etc.

Ergh, no, they don't.
Bigger choice? They give us masses of shelves stacked with the same kind of cr*p. (Thousands of boxes of Quality Street gives you the choice between thousands of exactly the same item. I could rarely find what I needed at superstores.)
Cheaper prices? It has often been shown that cheaper are only their "KVIs" - known values items, which lure the customers in, who then pay through their noses for stuff of which they don't know how much it should really cost...
Jobs? That's the biggest con. Wherever they open a new store, a lot more jobs in the area are lost, because so many smaller shops have to close down. In a superstore setting, one person can sell a lot more stuff than is sold by one person in a small shop.

[johnhcrf]

The superstores are not ideal. You can do all your shopping there and save time rather than going to 5 different shops. In busy town based lives this is a big advantage. My aim is to force their improvement by consumer action. Local shops are also valuable but cannot give all the variety of the larger stores. There are farmer issues which I respect where they are forced to accept monopolistic abuse by these superstores. That should be addressed also. But lets save our land as a priority.

John.

[ina]

The superstores are not ideal. You can do all your shopping there and save time rather than going to 5 different shops.

Well, I can't... They don't sell what I want! They sell a lot of processed rubbish, and very little local, basic food stuffs - so don't tell me they can offer me all I need! Maybe some people find everything they want at a superstore - I don't. Quite apart from the fact that there aren't any near here, so I'd have a very long drive, and it would take me much longer to do my shopping.
I find that most people who say they can't live without superstores haven't even been to the local shops yet, and don't know what is being sold there, and at what price. (I've had that discussion quite a few times with neighbours... And when I tell them about all the things they could have bought better and cheaper in the village, they are amazed.)

[johnhcrf]

I shop at both the biggest thing is the variety. Some things are a lot cheaper due to the economies of scale. In Johnstone, a Morrison's store opened and improved local shopping possibilities. But since I have started ZWP, I have avoided the store and preferred local ZWP options.

John.

[hedgewitch]

In theory ALL rubbish can be recycled.

Labels off things are either plastic or paper - recycle them accordingly
Paper tissues - use cloths instead
Envelopes - are paper and envelope windows are plastic - I'm always tearing them and putting the bits into the appropriate recycling bins.

My biggest problem I have is polystyrene - horrible, horrible stuff with no recycling worth what-so-ever.