Pay recycling costs, stores told. Not a chance.

The Local Government Association has obviously been reading The Carrier Bag Con, a good choice you'll no doubt agree. They think that supermarkets should pay for the recycling and disposal of their packaging, and that this will make the supermarkets cut back on their packaging. But they won't.

Why not? Because we, the consumer, won't let them. You see, we don't like bruised tomatoes. We don't like soggy paper bags full of vegetables. We like everything to be perfect and glossy and just like the pictures in Jamie's books. Actually that stuff might be glossy because of the spit thing. Anyway, we love our perfectly formed foodstuffs, and they just won't arrive like that from out of the back of the lorry without having all these layers of packaging. So the supermarkets will keep using the packaging, and they'll keep looking for other ways to be green. Like taking away our carrier bags.

Perhaps a compromise could be reached? Carrier bags in exchange for buying mis-shapen veg. Seems unlikely, to be fair.

4 items, 1 pile of waste

So, to summarise, we have bought some tomatoes, some peppercorns to refill our pepper mill, and some herbs. Really not a substantial amount of items, but a quite insane amount of packaging. Let's not forget Sainsbury's pledge:

We are focusing on reducing the amount of packaging we use wherever possible.

Well, this really doesn't look like you're trying very hard at all, does it?



Its all well and good expecting us to recycle our carrier bags, but perhaps we wouldn't need so many of the things if there wasn't such a huge amount of packaging wrapped around everything we buy. Even more shameful - a high proportion of this packaging cannot be recycled at all.

So as yet, we're not convinced, Sainsbury's.

Just a refill, please

Anyone that enjoys a gander at Masterchef of an evening will know that the cardinal sin of cooking is insufficient seasoning. Torode and that bald chap never specify exactly what they mean by this, but we assume its good old Sally Salt and Percy Pepper. God damn you Harriott.

We've got a pepper grinder, a nice wooden one, so all we need is some black peppercorns to go in it.

Exhibit 3: The Pepper



Hang on, there's only 2 places that those peppercorns are going - either into a pepper mill or into a bowl. Maybe into one of those odd shaker things that Jamie was whoring recently. Anyway, why do we have to have a glass jar? Wouldn't a small cardboard box, perhaps, be better?



Still, at least we can recycle the glass bit, but probably not the plastic cap.

Would you like some plastic with your herbs?

Next in our series of packaging experiements:


Exhibit 2: The Herbs

Here they are, in all their glory, some delicious Thyme, and some yummy Rosemary. Normally we use the Rosemary in the garden, but its raining.



That's interesting, the herbs appear to be wrapped in 2 kinds of plastic, just like the tomatoes.



That's quite a lot of waste for a very small quantity of herbs, isn't it? Still, no doubt we can recycle it.



Oh dear.

Coming right up: no sneezing, please, it's Pepper.

Putting Sainsbury's to the test

You may recall that we had a response from Sainsbury's referring to their commitment to reducing packaging. We'd accused them of using excessive plastic packaging in their products whilst pretending to be green earth lovers by encouraging us not to use carrier bags.

Here's what they said, for the record:

We are focusing on reducing the amount of packaging we use wherever possible.

So it seemed like a good idea to buy a few items and see whether their claim holds up.

Exhibit 1: Tomatoes

These are not just ordinary tomatoes... wait, that's not right. Anyway, here are the cuplrits, tucked away in their lovely plastic packaging.



Yes, that's a plastic tray, and a plastic wrapper too.



But not to worry, no doubt this lovely plastic can be easily recycled.



Oh dear, that's not good, is it? The plastic wrapper can't be recycled. So why have they used it? Perhaps the old greengrocer approach would work - you know, the one where you put your tomatoes in a brown paper bag and away you go.

Next: Herbs.

Asda are at it too

Asda joined the ranks of the misguided corporates on 1st June 2008 when carrier bags were removed from checkouts. Still, at least they've had a nice competition (or "brainwashing") for kids to design some lovely bags-for-life with happy smiley people on them carrying their shopping home in bags made from knitted horse hair or something equally unpleasant. So Asda join the hall of shame.

An answer. Not a very good one, but still...

We wrote to Sainsbury's to express our frustration at their new carrier bag policy. And we have a response. It is quite dry, no spit on it at all, so we can assume that Jamie didn't write it in between takes.

Thank you for your email which I read with interest. It is good of you to take the time to let me know your views about removing carrier bags from our checkouts.

Well the pleasure is entirely ours.

We take our commitment to reducing our effects on the environment very seriously. We want to make it easy for all our customers to reduce the number of bags they use. Free carrier bags were introduced in the early 1970s and customers have become used to receiving them.

Yes, nearly 40 years of providing customers with an essential part of the shopping experience.

We recently announced our plans to reduce the number of free plastic bags we give away by 50% by April 2009. To help us to achieve this new target we are working with our customers to reduce, reuse and recycle plastic bags.

We already reuse our plastic bags. As bin bags. We told you this in our email.

We are focusing on reducing the amount of packaging we use wherever possible. Indeed, we are confident that we will meet our target of a 5% reduction in packaging relative to turnover by 2010. So far we have achieved a 2.6% reduction. We now use 14% less plastic on our prepared salads than we did in January 2007, which will save 20.8 tonnes of plastic a year. We are also reducing the packaging on our crisps, snacks and nuts by 20%, which will save 85 tonnes of plastic a year. By May 2010, we will have reduced our produce packaging by 25% and 50% will be recyclable or compostable.

Ah, here's something interesting. We will examine this in more detail later.

Thank you for taking the time to contact us. I hope this information is useful to you.

Not really, but thanks all the same.

So, at least its a response. The part about reducing packaging is very interesting, and oddly unbelievable. We're sure we bought some tomatoes recently that were sat in a plastic tray, wrapped in a plastic sleeve, with a nice label on it. But we can't have a plastic bag. Some gathering of evidence seems in order, then.