I buy frozen food on a fairly regular basis and note that many items in a cardboard box are further packed in a plastic bag.
I always composted the cardboard.
Recently on opening a few cardboard boxes there was no separate internal plastic bag. Perhaps a green initiative to reduce the use of plastic. On tearing up the cardboard I find that the cardboard has a fairly thick inner plastic layer bonded to the card which makes it almost impossible to remove for composting and/or presumably more difficult to recycle.
I am I being overly cynical thinking that the suppliers of the frozen goods want to give customers the impression that they are saving the planet by removing plastic packing?
They are in fact making the problem worse by making recycling of what was once just wood fibre more difficult or impossible.
Its been many years since I came across a weigh it yourself type place, where you take along your own container. Original idea was they bought in bulk, you could save money and buy just what you needed, no packaging.
One just opened a few weeks ago, there prices and much more expensive than just buying from a normal shop with all the packaging.
But it's not all / just about the (immediate even) fiscal cost is it (and the point of course, 'life cycle analyst etc)?
Ignoring the point that we can't do much here (as a proportion of the global problem) we should be doing something, even if it's only the things that are the easiest to do, *as long* as they are actually helping (not just pushing the problem elsewhere).
Have noticed that some places are now selling white cabbages without being encased in plastic.
The outer leaves might dry a bit, but they seem to last at least as well as those in plastic. In particular, there seems less rot where the stalk was cut.
Forcing our food suppliers to supply 100% compostable packaging creates a supply chain for it, which once proven, everybody can use
if no-one starts down the road of forcing packaging to be fully compostable, suppliers will persist in insisting that it isn't possible for some made up reason or other.
The last white cabbage I purchased from lidl had no plastic packing and as you say the outer leaves haven't sweated and started to go rotten after a week unlike what used to happen if I failed to fully remove the plastic.
No, the outer layer has to be discarded irrespective of being still wrapped in plastic. Out of plastic they dry and in plastic they start to go black. This is the tight ball type white cabbage not the loose leaf type so discarding the outer layer doesn't remove much.
I use those small compostable bags for the kitchen food 'caddy'. I made the mistake of buying too many rolls at once. The last few rolls were unusable - as they had decomposed...
The local council or waste contract company supply mine to line the food waste caddies. If kept in a drawer they seem to last for years.
Unfortunately I haven't kept the original boxes as they went into the general rubbish after I tried to tear them up for composting and found that the bonded plastic layer was _very_ hard to tear. There is a possibility that they are using the same material as the compostable bags (made from starch?) but it didn't appear to be similar.
It seems that (I would say), 'many people' CGAF about anything, other than what 'they want' and so don't look / consider anything that doesn't impact them directly/ financially.
These are the sorts of people who never remember to take carrier bags with them shopping and are happy to pay for more each time and equally happy to stuff them all in the bin once home. They aren't nasty people, they are just ignorant and selfish (< selfish when they are made aware of the cost to all of us but still CGAF).
But putting a charge on things, even if that money is effectively just another TAX, seems to mean more to more people than trying to get them to do the right thing. Them buying a Prius was rarely about any potential green credentials (other than virtue signaling for celebs) but more about saving money on congestion taxes. Harry didn't put solar panels on his roof because he GAS about the planet, he did it to earn money (off the rest of us).
We took in an Ocado delivery for some friends when they were on their way back from holiday and we kept the ~20 carrier bags (and are still using them ourselves) as we were pretty sure they would just bin them (even if they could give them back on the next delivery, they would be unlikely to bother as that would mean them storing them somewhere in-between and why would they do that)?
I'm so pleased that most of my family aren't bothered about what other people think of us, or what clothes we wear, what cars we drive ... as they save us having to explain to them that we really DGAF what they think and maybe suggest that it's their priorities that are broken. ;-)
But I guess we need suckers buying fancy new cars, phones and clothes so that they can carry the burden of the depreciation and give us something that is better VFM. ;-)
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