The plastic tax.

[Workingman]

We are told that a "majority" of the 162,000 respondents to a consultation favour using the tax system to solve the problem of plastic waste. Well count me out.

None of us have ever needed to buy anything in a black, almost impossible to recycle, plastic tray; just ban them.

We have never needed mushrooms in punnets, carrots in plastic bags, celery in a plastic sleeve or cabbages wrapped in a thick plastic film; just do away with them. We could pick them loose and put them in a brown paper bag or no bag at all for the celery and cabbage, cauli, broccoli, turnips, apples, pears........

Does every ready meal need to be in a box? No!

When it comes to bottles and sandwich trays, the main culprits, allegedly, put a deposit on them. £2 per top and £3 per the main bottle or tray would soon see the numbers of them littering the sides of roads or washing up on the shore drop to insignificant numbers.

Can it with the punishment taxes, and while you are at it stop blaming us consumers with the "it's what we want" mantra. Nobody has ever "demanded" plastic wrapped produce, it is the producers and their desire to have their products look good that have pushed this upon us. A pea is a pea whether it is brand A or brand B.

[victor]

While I totally agree with you WM ,I think that it's also a case of supermarkets preferring fruit & veg plastic wrapped makes for easier handling/packing /storage.
Our Morrissons have started using paper bags for loose fruit & veg

[medsec222]

I have read that Morrisons are using paper bags. I haven't seen this up to now. If I pick anything up loose from the fruit and veg I just put it into my basket without a bag. Ultimately it is the responsibility of the producers to cut down on plastic.

[Workingman]

Ultimately it is the responsibility of the producers to cut down on plastic.

This.

Get them to change, but do it without hitting us shoppers.

[TheOstrich]

Certainly can't disagree with your OP, W.

When it comes to bottles and sandwich trays, the main culprits, allegedly, put a deposit on them. £2 per top and £3 per the main bottle or tray would soon see the numbers of them littering the sides of roads or washing up on the shore drop to insignificant numbers.

Go back to the 1950's, and your beer bottles had a 3d deposit, and indeed a soda syphon 1/6d, redeemable when you took them back to the off-licence. I used to have a lucrative service going, as my Aunt used to drink like a fish, and you could get a lot of bottles in the boot of a tricycle ….

[cromwell]

Funny how improvements can only come about by taxing the consumer.

[Kaz]

Good grief, we pay more tax on more things than almost anyone else already If the supermarkets stopped wrapping everything in double plastic, and provided paper bags instead of plastic for loose fruit and veg we would soon adapt We did over the carrier bags issue, I always have fold up bags with me now!

[Workingman]

And here we go again - blame the customer.

A new study by the University of Edinburgh found that a third of fruit and veg was 'too ugly to sell' - 50 million tonnes of fruit and veg grown across Europe are lost each year. Some of it was down to regulations, some down to customer expectations of how produce should look, and some to supermarkets' "high standards", and that is where the main problem lies. Farmers are known to over produce in the full expectation that supermarket buyers will reject part of the crop.

What irks the most is the click bait headline 'too ugly to sell' - it is total bollocks!

Day markets are popular throughout Europe where you can buy one or many of an unwrapped, non-uniform item. People are not bothered about bent cucumbers or apples with a diameter of 52-55mm. All of this "high standards" stuff is a supermarket con.

[Suff]

Day markets are popular throughout Europe where you can buy one or many of an unwrapped, non-uniform item. People are not bothered about bent cucumbers or apples with a diameter of 52-55mm. All of this "high standards" stuff is a supermarket con.

It is and it is not. The whole thing is about labelling and class 1 goods as opposed to class 2 goods. That is where the whole "bent banana" furore came from. It was not just a storm in a teacup, the French colony banana's matched the "standard" and the UK former colony banana's did not. Therefore the French produce could be labelled Class 1 and gain a higher price, whereas the British product could not.

This has spilled over into veg now and food is being wasted because of it.

It has absolutely nothing to do with whether people want to buy them or not. It has to do with labelling and prices. Essentially you are being charged more money for your veg so that they can throw away the "substandard" stuff. They will not sell it, it will be destroyed. Because the "bent" stuff will undermine the supermarket prices and that just won't do will it....

[medsec222]

In a small way Morrison have seen the light with their wonky potatoes etc. There are only a few products on sale at the moment, but a bag of wonky potatoes costs around 89p as opposed to £1.50-2.00. They taste the same to me.