When did we start accepting plastic is the new normal?

Last week I had a radio interview with NearFM about the #SaucyChallenge, and one of the questions Sabrina asked me was "When did all these single packaging starter?" and that got me thinking...

Shopping Frustrations

I don’t know about you but I am quite often absolutely shocked about the way shops, supermarkets, etc package the stuff I buy. Here is what happens, I bring my own reusable bag to put my shopping into, when I buy some fresh fish, they place it in a plastic bag and give it to me, I go to the check out till and the attendant puts the fish (already inside a bag), into a brown paper bag, for me to place the fish that is inside a bag, now wrapped on a second bag into my shopping bag. What the hell?? When did I start accepting plastic as the new normal?

And it is not only fish, the same happens when I buy firelighters, which come in a box, which also has a second plastic bag inside the box already. The level of separation from my firelighters to my skin is plastic wrapping around the firelighter itself, a box, a brown paper bag and my own shopping bag. Has this happened to you? I am tired to ask the till attendants not to re-wrap my shopping into extra bags and I know for a fact many others are too, it was actually my friend Gina that brought this up to me while having a glass of wine at our local pub. Our conversation got me thinking about packaging and how it has changed over the past 20 years. I clearly remember when I was a child I used to go to the local bakery to buy a fresh baguette everyday, it was one of those chores your parents assign you to teach you “responsibilities and a sense of duty”. I used to skip down to the bakery, pay my 60 pesetas (we had no Euro yet in Spain back then!) and the baker will hand me a baguette with a tiny piece of brown paper wrapped in the middle so when I held it I would not be touching the bread. That was the only wrapping I saw those days. Two weeks ago, I asked my husband to get some fresh bread from a bakery in Ennis, County Clare, I wont name the bakery because I don’t play the blame game, but when he arrived home I was in utter shock. The bread was wrapped in paper, I can only describe it a beautiful present wrapping, and then placed in a branded shopping paper bag, like the ones you get when buying clothes. Now I understand the paper and the bag are recyclable, but regardless of that, what is the need for them? Whatever happened to the small brown paper wrap around the bread?

Who Started these over packaging trends?

I can’t stop from wondering, who started these new trends? Why is wrapping over wrapping inside a bag necessary? Is it hygiene? I am still running the #SaucyChallenge to abolish Individually wrapped sauces from the Irish Food Service Industry and someone left a comment in one of my Facebook posts saying “They are more hygienic”, is this also the reason we now package food items 3 times?

In the aim to protect the food we eat, to avoid contamination, we are contaminating the entire planet with plastic & Packaging. And you know what the worst thing is? Most of the food we eat is already compromised anyway, by chemicals we use to grow produce faster, antibiotics in our meat, plastic in our fish…So what is the point??

Unnecessary

My new favourite word this year is “unnecessary”, I use it everyday, if I am thinking of buying something I ask myself “Is this item necessary”, if I am shopping and the cashier wants to give me extra wrapping I ask myself “Do I need this wrapped?”, you get the gist I am sure!! If it is not necessary then do not do it, do not buy it, do not use it, do not allow it become a part of your life. YOU are in charge of your life, what you use everyday, what you consume, what waste you produce, so if the Government or the industry are not going to help us band single use plastics, then ban them from your LIVE. So we can show them, that change comes from within.

My Granda once told me: “You cant change the world, you can only change yourself, and the way you treat the world”. Thanks Granda.

Ill leave you alone now but I do wonder, it is not hard to figure, that the reason all these extra packaging is readily available and pushed on us is MONEY. There are a few companies producing all these plastic around the globe for one single reason, MAKE MORE MONEY. I will do some investigating this week about these….Until next week!

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Raquel