A few months ago, our local produce supermarket Devon’s Own sadly had to shut down. Originally we’d used Devon’s Own as an ethical choice - local, seasonal food with a low carbon footprint. As a small organisation their range was never as wide as any major supermarket chain and I think we thought we were making a few compromises in terms of what we were able to buy in our food shopping from week to week.
However, in the process of looking for an alternative we started to realise how hard it is to get an ethical weekly shopping delivery. Fruit & veg is easy, we just went back to Riverford. Riverford would be an option for meat too, but there’s a minimum order value and we can’t fit enough into our tiny freezer. Pipers Farm would be the ideal choice, but getting up to them once a week is, in reality, not going to happen - the food needs to be delivered to the house. So for the regular food we’ve been forced to shop with a mixture of Waitrose and Sainsbury’s. Sainsbury’s as first choice and Waitrose as fallback if delivery slots are filled up.
We’re not able to get as much local food as we could before, but always do our best to at least be getting, ethical, fairtrade, freerange, organic ... and getting to the point of this article: what I’ve noticed is how much packaging from these supermarkets is actually not recyclable. Meat packaging is a particular culprit - the majority of them have the message Sorry - plastic not currently recyclable.
Now this annoys me on a number of levels. First: if that type of plastic isn’t recyclable - why not use a type of plastic that is? Secondly: the phrase not currently recyclable - it’s a form of excusing themselves, “it’s not our fault ... if only the council would sort themselves out our packaging could be recycled”. Unacceptable - you’ve made the knowing decision to use non-recyclable plastics, just admit it: Packaging not recyclable. No half-hearted well if you hang onto it for a few months, it might be recycled in some areas.
Or better still - cut out the packaging altogether.