This packaging takes the piss

[insanitypack]

I tweeted Waitrose and this was their response:

Hi Sam, reducing our impact on the environment is really important to us and we know it is to our customers too. We have committed to making all our own-label packaging widely recyclable, reusable, or home compostable by 2025.

Surely this product shouldn't have made it onto shelves in the first bloody place! Madness.

It started with the OP sniping at “wankers” who wanted to buy black garlic. She took it there.

I'm Welsh and I'm not posh . I bought black garlic from The Garlic Farm in the Isle of Wight. It comes in a dinky tub with no additional packaging.

TeddyIsaHe please could you tell me how to make black garlic.

Just because it is recyclable (most places) doesn't mean it's ok. The amount of energy and omissions given off in manufacturing that is not insignificant. The amount it would take to recycleinto something new is also not insignificant. They could have put a label on the vacuum sealed inside product. Or put it in a little paper bag with a bigger label. It's ridiculous. Their reply is not good enough. It's not hard to realise that packaging is excessive and damaging to the planet.

Nice bit of snobbery there, I shop at Asda and do give a fuck about the environment thanks.
This packaging was a mascara from Benefit

Bon Appetit have a video on making black garlic.

I'm laughing at going to your local Turkish market. My home town barely has a normal market and no ethnic shops.

Just because it is recyclable (most places) doesn't mean it's ok.

This, 1,000x over.

I would say it's the inner wrapper that is superfluous. It's single use and mostly non-recyclable with kerbside collections meaning most will out it right in the bin.

You can turn email notifications off

Or people can not @ me when I ask them to stop

Turning it off stops them. Asking people not to only stops those that see your request and take heed.

I turned mine off. Job done.

I shop in waitrose as it is close to me, but i also use their scan and go function (other near supermarkets don’t have this function) so i weigh fruit and veg and put it straight in the bag in the order to not squash it.

to be fair it’s cut my packaging in half doing that 🙂

i’ve never seen the poly stuff in the veg, i shall now look out for it and avoid it so thanks for info.

Coco I think you’ve misread. I’m saying those shopping at Asda are not too posh to give a fuck, in contrast to the OP’s suggestion that anyone at Waitrose would be too posh to give a fuck. Given I also set out my experience of overpackaging at Asda so clearly shop there, and am in fact on the way to Asda on the tube at this very moment, would suggest it’s far from snobbery. My point is that the problem with overpackaging is not to do with a supermarket or it’s patrons being posh so not caring, it’s that every supermarket has to pander to customer demand which, at the moment, is overwhelmingly focussed on finance not the environment.

I agree that the onus and pressure should not be placed upon the end user (consumer).

What needs to happen is a 'plastic tax' on manufacturers that package their products in it and vendors who then sell said plastic-encased products.

In a capitalist society there has to be financial motivation to affect real change.

@SuburbanRhonda

I bought a pack of crackers the other day from Waitrose and was so shocked at how wasteful the packaging was that I took photos. I meant to complain but didn’t bother.

It wouldn’t annoy me half as much if they didn’t bang on about being such a responsible company. The reason the packaging is so wasteful is purely to ‘fool’ the customers into thinking they are buying premium products. I certainly felt foolish after buying the crackers. 😒

The photos show the size of the packet before and after I rearranged the crackers. They both have the full amount of crackers in. Basically, the box was about 3/5 empty.

I felt ripped off.

The reason for a lot of excessive packaging, beyond product protection, is shelf appeal. If black garlic comes in just some wrapping there’s no front of packaging to catch your eye, similarly, a bigger box suggests more content and takes up more space in the shelf - why give up free advertising space and potentially risk your product being missed in favour of a competitor in a box. Virtually all packaging could be, in theory, be avoided for online shops where there is no physical shelf space to think about.

I remember this photo from another thread I was on that I need to catch up on. Ridiculously wasteful.

Sorry LostIn, I did reread it after I posted and thought I might have got it wrong.
In my defense I'm stupid hungover 😊

Just found out you can buy a machine to make black garlic so it must be popular.

Troys it’s really easy but does take a long time!

Normal garlic, get as good bulbs as you can - nice big fat organic ones. Into a bowl and douse lightly in a liquid of some sort. You can use water, wine, sake, beer etc. It shouldnt be soaking, just damp. Deal the cloves into heat resistant sandwich bags, getting as much air out as possible.

Now the difficult part. They need to be kept at around 50-60 degrees for 6 weeks to allow the fermentation. I have used a dehydrator to great success, but a slow cooker can work if you test the temp with a digital thermometer and keep it around the 54 degree mark as much as possible. Any higher and it’ll dry the garlic out, you can still use it (grind into a powder) but it’s not as sweet.

I’m currently testing out airing cupboard black garlic to see if a few extra weeks at a lower temp will produce the same result without having a fire hazard in my kitchen!

When I lived in Germany twenty-five years ago (Oh GOD I'm SO OLD...) you could take the packaging off your shopping once you were past the till and leave it for the shop to deal with. I've always thought that was an excellent idea as it puts responsibility for dealing with the issue back with the party who can stop it at source.

It's like BaronessBomburst said earlier: the problem isn't just the supermarkets, it's the UK.

I feel you Coco. I’m slightly tired hungover on a long tube ride to the supermarket because the cafe is DN’s favourite restaurant and the only thing she will allow to pass her lips this weekend. No taste at all, Ikea cafe is clearly superior and 30 minutes closer.

Chocolate is your hobby collecting plastic pots?

Waitrose also do a range of vacuum packed slow cooked meats such as the one in the attached photo. The joints of meat are in their vacuum packed sleeves AND a roomy cardboard box. The boxes probably have to be a bit roomy to accommodate the irregularly sized joints but even so they are ridiculously wasteful. You don’t need them at all. The reason that Waitrose use them is presumably because they make the product look like a premium product, the boxes stack neatly on the shelf and help display the contents.....but even so they are CO PLETELY POINTLESS.

Unfortunately Waitrose talk corporate bollox....
“We welcome the UN Sustainable Development Goals and are committed to contribute to a prosperous and resilient society in which our Partners, customers and industry can thrive, within the means of our planet”

They must think their customers are idiots if we are expected to believe this crap.

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