Lunch in the bag

by Simon Handby in At home on 19.05.08

Whether you use an unbleached hemp shopping bag, or gleefully fill up a bunch of single-use carriers, the chances are you’ll struggle to keep up with the supermarket cashier. Personally, I’m yet to work out whether they’re trying to bleep quicker than I pack, or if I just have a persecution complex.

Never mind me, one supermarket experience that unites us all is the moment when you pick up an everyday item, and wonder why it’s surrounded by quite as much packaging. You can see the point for an egg, perhaps, but why do four baked potatoes need a plastic bag, and a plastic tray?

I’m glad I’m not the only one who gets grumpy about it, anyway. Government advisor Professor Chris Coggins has told the BBC that worrying about carrier bags is a diversion, and that supermarkets should be concentrating on reducing packaging across their ranges. It’s not just supermarkets with the problem, either, as I’ve often thought when buying lunch during the working week.

Salad days

With this in mind, this week we’ve decided to run an unscientific survey of our daily lunch and the packaging it comes in.

After a less-than-healthy weekend, three of us had the urge to club together and share some salad. Somerfield’s packaging is typical for a supermarket – in fact, it looks pretty-much identical to equivalent products from other chains: salad leaves come in a bag, bread comes in a bag, and fancy peppers come in a bag.

Tomatoes come in a plastic tray with a plastic wrap, unless of course they’re organic like these ones, in which case they have a cardboard tray and a compostable cellophane wrap. Our guess at supermarket logic here is that, if you don’t mind paying extra for organic, you’re probably OK with paying extra for packaging that won’t stick around in landfill for a couple of centuries.

Houmous, along with other dips, seems to have particularly pointless packaging. While we’ve seen it just in plastic pots, most supermarkets’ own brands have an extra cardboard wrap that doesn’t look particularly necessary.

Supermarkets seem agreed, though, that just two rubber bands are enough to protect the hardy salad onion from the rigours of transit.