Since when do the supermarkets do it?
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I have no idea when they started doing it, but that is one of the reasons organic produce is wrapped in plastic, as mentioned early in the thread.
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@kday tweeted about the plastic wrapping of bananas in Woolworths and a petition has also been created on Change.org by Pat Lowe. Please consider signing the petition and retweeting Katinka Dayâs tweet
Some other petitions re plastic that are also worth checking out:
Of course it isnât just Coles and Woolworths who do the plastic wrap & bagging, it occurs in lots of stores and getting behind these petitions is a step forward in trying to reduce or eradicate this practice.
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I received and signed the change.org one yesterday too. My wife and I have been appalled by the sea of plastic in the veg section in supermarkets for quite a long time, and refuse to buy overpackaged fruit and veg, preferring unpackaged items.
However, it isnât only fresh foods. The number of cheeses with minimal packaging in the main cheese section has gradually diminished, being replace by overpackaged cheeses in tiny âchild sizedâ packets. My wife tells me a whole lot of similarly small packets of yoghurts have recently taken over a lot of shelf space in that isle too.
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Thanks for raising this @grahroll. I think the media and attention around this will send a strong message to the retailers. When I need to buy something in the supermarket that has unnecessary plastic, I take the item out of the plastic and find a staff member to tell them that I donât want the plastic and ask them to reuse it. I donât know whether that works but at least it shows we donât want our fruits and veggies wrapped in plastic!
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Unfortunately Woolworths isnât the only one. If one goes to any of the major supermarkets (Coles, Aldi, IGA etc), more and more products are being wrapped in heat sealed modified atmosphere plastic bags or in plastic containers.
Even our local green grocer has more and more products wrapped rather than loose/in bulk.
Packaging can increase shelf life (MA packaging) or reduce spoiling (through minimising customer handling), but on the other foot ir creates unnecessary waste which is becoming more difficult to manage (e.g. recycle as the biggest imported plastic recycler, China, has shut it doors to waste plastic imports).
The issue is not potentially only that of the supermarkets/retailer, but the whole supply chain from the container/packaging industry who makes and markets the packaging, the primary producers who want less waste of their farm products, transporter/storage facilities who now want products to be easy to handle and the retail outlets who want to sell bundle buys rather than individual items (and will potentially argue for food safety).
It appears convenience and potentially a few customers who have phobias about other customers potentially touching their product before purchase, has steered the industry towards over packaging.
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Absolutely agree, and as you & @gordon point out it isnât just fruit and vegetables but a vast variety of things that are getting the plastic treatment. At times it is plastic packets/wrap within plastic packets/wrap within plastic packets/wrap sometimes even interspersed with cardboard or paper.
Yes, some of the packaging gives extra shelf life to items and perhaps in some of these it may be somewhat warranted, but some of these plastics are hard or impossible to currently get recycled. Without the community taking a strong stance on this issue I think the businesses will just continue to wrap us in their flimsy âplasticâ excuses and place plastic on anything they deem worthy of it, if in fact they donât increase itâs use.
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Do not shoot the messenger, but my partner prefers the plastic wrapped in some cases because they have best by dates on them while the loose product is anyoneâs guess. Sometimes the loose product is obviously fresh but sometimes not so much and a pack with a date can be reassuring.
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Takes out popgun and fires the cork 
I concur it may be helpful/useful/needed but canât they think outside the current box and come up with a way to achieve most of their aims without swamping us with plastic? If we didnât express dissatisfaction with the current usage/trend would they have the impetus to change or innovate? My impression is no they wouldnât.
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Hi , i just joined up.I find there are two quality problems with pre packaged vegetables and fruit. Firstly you canât easily inspect for freshness or even mould on the fruit , and secondly you canât choose the size you want depending on how you use it. For items as dead cheap in the budget as vegetables and to a lesser extent fruit, quality overrides all other concerns for us , so we pick and choose exactly what we want.
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The obvious answer is to keep fresh loose produce
But they put that in the too hard basket that gets checked out via the P/L statement.
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There are places in this wide brown land where these concerns might have more merit. Personally I donât worry and hate plastic packaging - but itâs getting increasingly harder to avoid it, especially here where retail options are more limited âŚ
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Their was never a issue before when stuff was sold loose.So why now?I wouldnât be surprised the supermarkets are basically doing this to save themselves some money.Supermarkets want to show they are doing the right thing by getting rid of plastic bags but they are turning around and using plastic on their fruit and vegetables that makes no sense.Visit you local Fruit and Vegetable shop would be my advice.To my knowledge the oneâs around in my neck of the woods are very good that way
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It looks like loose produce is cheaper around 53% of the time. It would be great if that number was higher, but in any case itâs another consideration when dealing with plastic wrapped veggies:
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Progress 
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Coles always seems to be playing catch-up with Woolworths. Hey, at least they are trying to stay in the game, but Woolworths seems to be excelling on the environmental progress front.
An email my father forwarded me from Woolworths:
Dear [],
Green. Itâs our colour. But itâs time we went even greener. Because we believe that becoming more sustainable is the way forward.
While weâve made progress in reducing the amount of plastic in our stores, and made improvements in areas of energy efficiency, sustainable sourcing and reducing food waste, we know more needs to be done.
And today on World Environment Day, we have announced a number of initiatives that represent further small, but important, steps in our commitment to make positive change happen.
⢠By the end of 2018, all stores within the Woolworths Group will no longer be selling plastic straws - saving 134 million plastic straws from going into the environment every year.
⢠With our phase out of single-use plastic shopping bags on June 20th, Woolworths Supermarkets will offer a new green reusable shopping bag - with a lifetime replacement offer - for customers to purchase. Money made from the sale of the Bag for Good⢠will also go to the Woolworths Junior Landcare Grants Program.
⢠We will continue to trial the removal of plastic packaging on a further 80 fruit and vegetable products over the next 12 months, to build on the 140 tonnes of plastic we saved in fruit and vegetables in the last year.
⢠By the end of this month, all Woolworths Supermarkets will have a convenient plastic recycling option for you when shopping in partnership with REDcycle. REDcycle is a closed loop recycling solution where you can return soft plastics used to package produce and groceries, so it can be put to good use by our recycling partners to create products such as outdoor furniture.
⢠A commitment for 100% of Woolworths Supermarkets to have a food waste diversion partner by the end of 2018 to support our commitment towards zero food waste to landfill by 2020.
We understand that this journey has challenges, and that being green is not easy, but together with you - our customers, weâre determined to make positive change happen; to move our country and our planet towards a greener future.
On behalf of the Woolworths team,
Brad Banducci
Chief Executive Officer
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Hopefully that will mean that the panorama of plastic packaged fruit & vegetables currently seen in Woolies will change for the better. The amount of plastic used in that section has been increasing over recent years, so a reverse in that trend would be welcomed. Weâve stopped buying some F&V in there because of the plastic packaging.
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Yeah give me brown paper bags to put my loose vege and fruit in. They just need to open the bag to see what is in there to calculate the correct price. Mind you at the self service it would be used to avoid paying the correct price but that now happens anyway. Easy fix in the case of self service is to get rid of self service or bag the items at self service.
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This what we useâŚare home hand made net bags which weigh about 10-15 grams - 15 for bigger ones.
These can also be bought online as wellâŚbut easy to make oneself if one knows how to use a sewing machine. Very cheap to make as wellâŚespecially if one has an old curtain lying around that can be recycled.
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