I don’t really think there’s much of a discussion to be had about this - but I find it really interesting to think about so I wanted to share.
I was just reading
this article. If you can’t be bothered reading it, it’s about the growing number of people who bring reuseable containers to the shops - so instead of getting their meat or cheese in a plastic bag from the deli or butchers they’ll get it in the box.
I work in the deli at woolies and it’s something that’s happened a bit here. People most frequently bring their containers for us to put olives in - which works fine. But people also bring containers for other things. I was recently given a container to put chicken in, on the surface it seems fine but what people don’t seem to consider is if it will actually reduce waste.
For chicken what I would normally do is flip a bag inside out and use it to pick up the chicken. So total plastic use (excluding the bag the chicken came in etc.) is one thin plastic bag. Instead the only option that I had to put the chicken in the box was a glove - a plastic glove. So really the amount of plastic used in either scenario isn’t really any different.
The person buying the food feels like they’re doing something good by bringing the reuseable container - but really their effort here made no difference to their plastic use.
You might have noticed that there’s not any particular point to this post. I just find it really interesting that’s there’s clearly people willing to try and reduce their plastic use, but that people either don’t know how to do it effectively or just don’t consider the plastic used to get the product to them.
I don’t say this to discourage anyone from bringing reuseable containers haha - it works great for some products, and I know some shops (particularly independent delis/butchers) are great at using tongs etc so they don’t use plastic. I just think it’s really interesting that there’s almost no attention given to this sort of thing, it seems everyone is too busy focusing on what waste they end up with (eg. excessive plastic packaging etc) and not so much on what waste is generated in the process.
Note: I wasn’t really sure where to put this, was going to put it in news but here seemed a bit more appropriate but still not quite right.