To be annoyed at Tesco meal deal sandwiches?

[Sweetforthesummer]

New to mumsnet so if I get things wrong in this post please excuse me.

Anyway, the other day I got myself and the DC a tesco meal deal for lunch.

I had to get back to doing some jobs so I left the DC to finish their sandwiches.

I came back to check on them about 20 minutes later and found torn paper from the sandwich wrapper all over the kitchen table.

I asked DC1 what on earth was going on and they explained to me that they had to peel off the plastic to recycle the card. 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

We cleaned up the card in the end and recycled it but AIBU to think that working, busy people aren't going to go to that much effort to recycle some paper?

Went back to tesco today to get some more and they claim to be fully recyclable on the packaging.

Yeah right! Obviously I'm still going to use them so just a rant really.

By the time you went to tesco and bought meal deal you probably could have made sandwiches at home, fresh, for about a tenth of the cost!! And nothing to recycle!!

unless she’s made her own bread with flour from her own mill, churned her own butter using milk from the cow in the garden and slaughtered a pig herself, there will be some recycling 😃

I recycle where I can but I can’t really be bothered to be honest. I’m certainly not spending time faffing about separating things.

I had a vegan pizza the other day and it said- one thing not recyclable, one thing was, then one thing was but you had to put in a supermarket bin or something. Err nobody got time for that!!

So I don’t make a big effort, admittedly. But I don’t have children and haven’t flown for over a decade so I feel my carbon footprint is much smaller than many anyway.

Well done to your kids

One of the best ways to prevent over use of plastic is to look for an alternative, which a good few items have.

It's large companies that are the problem!
Nothing is little people do will make any difference when the huge corporations are filling the seas and landfills.
But whatever makes people feel like they are doing something.
OP I can't believe you gave this more than a passing thought never mind got so irate about it to post.

Calling people miserable when you’re typing out paragraphs about a non-event from days ago 😄

Yes, this.

Make your own sandwiches if you don't want them to come wrapped in plastic/cardboard.

Recycling misses the point if you care cut your usage.

In future just make your own packed lunch.

Re-using is always better than recycling as recycling still uses machines etc to run.

If you have a lunch box you can just wash it out and keep re-using them.

It’s cheaper and better for the environment and it means less faff trying to recycle the tesco sandwich packets.

Oh good heavens!

Or rather WTF!

Is this worth posting about?

There is a lot of packaging that is a combo of cardboard (recycle) and cling film type plastic.

It takes what, 20 seconds at the most to whip the plastic off the cardboard?

BUT I'd query whether the plastic is not recyclable.

Why don't you make a sandwich is this is causing you so much angst?

I think in the past some supermarket sandwich packages were fully recyclable. But in order for food to be packaged properly and not get damaged during delivery as well to make them last longer, they no longer use cardboard packaging.
All the damaged ones would end up on a yellow sticker aisle. And towards the end of the day, the sandwiches would have reduced stickers on them because they’d be expiring. But now they tend to last a day or two or so longer in their current packaging. I used to buy sandwiches in Boots and now I see they too have gone that route so I just make my own sandwiches from now on, it’s also more cost effective as well.

😂

It can be quite entertaining OP, don’t let it put you off.

To be fair spending £3/3.50 per person x amount of times a week on meal deals would cause me more angst.

Have you got any other cool stories for us OP? I was going to go to the gym but this thread is far more gripping.

Yes I have a bag for this now, excellent idea

I agree with this. Less waste all round.

I noticed this when I bought a sandwich for my work lunch. I took the packet home as it said recyclable but I could not manage to separate all the plastic. Its not just the window, there is a thin layer over the inside of all the cardboard. After a few minutes of trying I gave up and it ended up in my bin. I'm always taking my work lunch rubbish home I've ended up with a takeaway lunch so I can recycle the bottles and packets etc. Was disappointed with the sandwich packet.

I thought contaminated cardboard couldn't be recycled anyway and went in the household waste bin

Arf

Come to think of it, it did rather remind me of that skit from The Catherine Tate Show. I can almost imagine the scene enacted by the Aga Saga character.

The answer is to stop buying highly packaged foods if you can (people who find it hard to prepare food should obviously do what works best for them). If we're able to, we need to get used to a bit less comfort and variety.
Corporations and the government have their part to play, sure, but they answer to us, so...

Can I just confirm... you bought packaged sandwiches from a supermarket, ate them in your kitchen with sandwich-making facilities, then made a Mumsnet thread about environmental issues related to packaging?