To wish supermarkets would not wrap cucumbers in plastic?

[wildfellhall]

Let alone all the other veg.

I would like to shop in Aldi more often but it's a massive plastic festival. If an aubergine can be unwrapped - why not a cucumber?

Because cucumbers have a lot of water in them, try to do experiment and buy two, and leave one unwrapped in your fridge, it will go bad much quicker.
Other veg wrapped in plastic I don't understand.

I would be quite happy to go back to loose fruit and veg and paper bags so I can just buy what I want and need.

I like the plastic. It means when I take a couple slices of the cucumber I can fold the plastic over the cut part so it doesn’t absorb the fridge smells.

They last longer if they are wrapped in plastic. But I agree about pointless plastic, of which there is still too much. And as a single person I don't want to buy a plastic wrapped family sized bag of veg or salad.

I don’t buy fruit or veg if they are wrapped in plastic for no reason. I expect the big bosses at Lidl etc don’t care much but it makes me feel better!

I agree far too much plastic used for fruit and veg.

A weekly shop unwrapped and stored in the fridge/fruit bowl creates such a pile of plastic wrappers is shameful.

I could get far more het up about plastics and the waste than climate change yet nothing is done to reduce such an awful use of them.

Same. I try and get to the market instead of supermarket when I can for this reason. The volume of packaging we all buy week in week out is horrifying. I’m really trying to reduce it but it’s everywhere. Why does toothpaste need to be in a box? Why do pain au chocolate need to be individually wrapped? I’m getting a milkman too, so no more plastic milk cartons.

I had a veg box delivery until recently so must of my veg came 100% plastic-free but you always had your top up with something in plastic. They make it so hard.
I wish we could help ourselves in brown bags, they want us to do all the work anyway, why not let us do that as well?

Cucumbers are the only fruit/veg item I buy that are wrapped in plastic. (Actually, I do buy mushrooms but that wrap is at least recyclable at the store)

They do last far longer with the wrap so that saves on food waste. It's a shame it isn't recyclable though.

That cost would go up, the plastic actually helps preserve the cucumbers niceness/longevity also peppers last better. You can recycle the plastic at the supermarket or once you've paid you can hand it back to the cashier /leave it at the till point.

They dry out without the plastic. We used to get unwrapped ones in a veg box and tbh they weren't great after about 48 hours.

No plastic would be a very fast easy way for one cucumber to ruin the whole crate tbh.

They keep better in the plastic, though we don’t buy then in summer as we grow our own.

Plastic wrap on cucumbers sold in Britain is surprisingly well thought out.

As they tend to have a thinner skin than other countries cucumbers, without the close wrap they lose moisture too fast and go squidgy or their thin skin will get damaged and rot.

I would prefer it if the wrap was a compostable one personally, but it is better to have the plastic wrap and avoid wastage as opposed to no wrap and a high wastage.

Morrisons trialed not wrapping cucumbers a year or so ago, it was a massive failure and resulted in a load of food waste, the cucumbers went floppy and lost their structural integrity very quickly, got damaged, and began to develop mould really quickly.

That's not to say plastic wrap is the only option, a plant based cellulose or similar would be used.

This is exactly why they don't do it. If people only bought what they needed, say 4 tomatoes rather than 6, they'd be less food waste. Food waste in homes is good for supermarket profits.

More food waste and carbon used if you don't wrap them

Yeah I think it's to do with the cucumber skin. Home grown cucumbers have a slightly thicker skin and last a couple of weeks in the fridge. If you take the plastic off a supermarket cucumber it's horrible in a couple of days.

Need thicker skinned cucumbers! I guess perhaps the reason we don't have them is that British people prefer their tasteless thin skinned cucumbers 🤷

Most supermarkets sell some loose fruit and veg.

Normally it's bananas, onions and other items people just use one.

I grow cucumbers on the allotment and I don't wrap them when I pick them but because of that they don't last long. I use them within a few days to make sure they are still good and crunchy. With transport and storage supermarkets will need some way to wrap the cucumbers to keep them fresh, but there must be a non plastic option.

In my post, I meant that the cost would rise due to wastage/spoilage

Sainsbury's sell those little Turkish cucumbers without plastic wrap.

It’s interesting because you can buy a non plastic wrapped cucumber in Australia and it lasts just fine. I hate plastic wrapped veggies and fruit and use reusable mesh bags if I have to but otherwise they just roam free!

Big supermarket like Tesco and Morrisons have a soft plastic recycling bit.

All cat food pouches,crisp packets and numerous other stuff is recycled with the plastic bags.

I know. The film on a cucumber says "not currently recycled" though.

Lots of film on produce/products say not currently recycled that can be due to using up older packaging etc
The soft plastic cycling scheme removes the wrong items and passes on to the right place it used to say on the recycle bins ( I use Morrisons which is a giant cage so haven't seen a small biin style one in a while)