The industry’s trade association, the Retail Council of Canada, said the new policy “unfortunately” targets large grocers exclusively.
“Which is impractical, as Canadian retailers lack direct control and influence over the global supply chain,” said Michelle Wasylyshen, the council’s national spokesperson.
“All garbage truck drivers should be banned from dumping plastic in the dump!”
“All supermarket should sell a thicker plastic in place of thin plastic bags and call it reusable!”
“All candy company should sell two candy in one package for the environment conscious consumers with a tag line ‘slash your candy wrapper use in half’”
- Department of corporate blame redirection /s
I agree it’s not the supermarkets’ fault but it’s an industry problem. Why is everything wrapped in plastic? Even bananas and cucumbers and things that don’t need plastic?
One thing we could do is have refillable containers and just reuse them! Why are bulk aisles just a thing for nuts and grains? Why can’t we come and fill up milk or shampoo or other things in our refillables?
Anyway, the bigger story is that there are too many humans. We don’t have a plastics problem, we have a human overpopulation problem.
Even bananas and cucumbers and things that don’t need plastic?
Cucumbers, like many other foods, are wrapped in plastic because they last longer that way. Less spoilage comes with many obvious benefits, like not needing to produce/transport as many, which reduces greenhouse gas emissions. Of course, nothing in life comes free of tradeoffs. Pick your poison.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a plastic wrapped banana in the store, but it is documented that wrapping bananas in plastic also slows their rate of decay, so no doubt the calculus leans towards plastic in some situations as well.
Seriously. The amount of foam trays and plastic containers used is insane, and entirely because it would cost more to develop a biodegradable alternative than to accept a bad look and just say it’s for the consumer’s bottom line.
While I admit that some things are done better in traditional plastic until we can create decent and cheap bioplastics (we’re getting close for low strength, though I don’t know if transparency is good or not), many things can just be swapped with waxed paper or cardboard. We’ve been using waxed paper for cup for decades now, just adapt that for other uses.
Supermarket chains have plenty of control and influence over their supply chain.
Michelle, my friend, rethink your career as a corporate cockglober.
Nobody with a drop of knowledge of how this world works would buy this bs.
Supermarket chains have plenty of control and influence over their supply chain.
Absolutely. The customer holds all the cards. But, likewise, the supermarket chains are beholden to their customers, and those customers have shown a clear preference towards the use of plastics. How do you convince them to change?
Are people mad about this?
I rather my egg cartons come in recyclable cardboard than the weird ass plastic thing. Milk used to come in glass bottles. Peanut butter and jam too. Theres absolutely no fucking reason to put bananas in a plastic Ziploc bag.
Y’all want more microplastics?
Milk is generally better off in plastic than glass for emissions reasons, unfortunately. Glass is too heavy
Avalon Dairy in BC uses glass bottles, and grocery stores which sell them take them (in exchange for your $1 deposit) and send the bottles straight back to Avalon. They get cleaned and reused directly. If you’re at the store, you can look closely at all the bottles and find the dates they were first used. Alas, I’ve kind of gone off getting them now that we’re using 2L bottles of milk every week - the bigger bottles are extra bulky and my nearest grocery store doesn’t sell Avalon.
I’m still a big fan, though. It’s a good system, it genuinely causes the bottles to be reused (instead of just not made out of plastic, or “recycled”), and it’s so simple. We could easily have this for everything if we regulated (or at least incentivized) specific containers for groceries, at least for things packaged domestically. No more needlessly complicated special jars for different brands of maple syrup. If every company used the same containers, when they reach the recycling depot (hopefully intact, although that’s another problem) we could actually do something sensible with the things.
Milk used to come in glass bottles
I don’t want more glass (deposit and all) unless they go back to milkmen delivering it and taking away the empties. And even then, that wouldn’t work because of the delivery costs.
I have so much glass I have to take to the recycling depot and it’s not worth your time and gasoline to do it.
Completely forgot that you guys have literal milk bags. lol
I don’t think I’ve ever seen an egg carton that isn’t out of recycled paper though. For glass stuff there’s at least an argument to be made about weight, but in regards to drinking water it should ideally be unnecessary anyway through clean tap water.
Completely forgot that you guys have literal milk bags. lol
Packaged together in another plastic bag, then placed in yet another plastic bag at checkout. It is the Russian doll of consumer packaging.
I’m in the US, but I’ve seen plenty of plastic egg cartons. Most are paper, but plastic isn’t uncommon in my experience.
The only plastic cartons for eggs I’ve seen were clear plastic ones for colored Easter eggs.
