Tags
Albertsons Marketplace, Groceries, marketing, Organic products, packaging, plastics, pollution, Sustainability, waste
What prompts us to pay more for organics?
Would it be to avoid antibiotics?
Or is it more nutrients we are after?
Do we love the feel of the natural wrapper?
Are we avoiding hormones, drugs, and chemicals?
Do we hope to stave off free radicals?
Do organics taste better, or is it all merely perversity?
Some undoubtedly hope to preserve agricultural diversity.
Maybe we yearn to avoid genetic modification.
Perhaps we are leery of the synthetic pesticide solution.
I know I want to reduce waste and pollution.
Why then, would Albertson’s fancy Marketplace
individually swaddle in plastic film and lace
so many of their fine organic products?
Doesn’t all that extra wrapping diminish profits?
Do they not see me wandering the rows
in search of one or three naked organic potatoes?
Why do they trap in Styrofoam tubs my organic tomatoes?
My only organic choices for grapes and green beans
are captured in plastic packaging like bloody proteins.
Do they not see me leave the produce section,
head shaking, grocery bag sagging in hungry dejection?
Do they not know that I will go elsewhere
to find vegetables in bins open to the air
to be freely hand-selected by shoppers?
I guess they really don’t need my dollars.
Rangewriter 
Linda, we must vote with our feet. We cannot fathom the amount of plastic that goes unrecycled. Keith
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Yeah, it’s true. We vote with our feet and our dollars. Trouble is this fancy Albertsons Marketplace is less than a quarter mile from my house, which means it’s my go-to store to walk to. I get really annoyed when I cruise through the produce and have to walk out empty handed. Grrrrr. I just wonder if they are aware of the business they lose with all that plastic.
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This has long been my pet peeve, Bob’s as well. Don’t use a plastic bag, yet all the organic yummies are encased in the heavy duty plastic containers, defying all sense of “care for the environment”. When in England & Scotland 2 years ago, couldn’t believe the markets with everything housed in plastic.
Then with Covid, as far as we had come with avoiding using plastic grocery bags, we were no longer allowed to use our own reusable bags. One step forward, two steps back. I still bring my own bags in & just use self check & load my own, in the cart.
Bob is also beginning the process of growing as much of our own fruit/veggies organically. We haven’t been on these 3 acres 9 months, but he has already planted 38 trees & we have fresh hydroponic lettuce now. With his demanding job, he keeps plugging on the home front projects as best he can. Also have our free range chickens & ducks & give away hundreds of eggs. Pup loves her daily duck egg, too. Every little bit helps. We inch along.
It boils down to each one of us doing what we can, using good ole common sense/concern to battle the greedy, commercial giants who simply don’t give a rat’s butt.
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Yeah. The pandemic has broken those carefully nurtured good habits of reusing bags. I had gotten to where I even brought my own peanut butter containers and veggie bags. At least now most stores allow us to use our own grocery bags if we bag our own. But I suspect that the cashiers might not be too happy if I started bringing my own containers as well, since they do have to handle those items.
It’s funny that England & Scotland were such prolific plastic users. I’ve found Germany and most of the other European countries I’ve visited to be far more vigilant about reuse, reduce, recycle. A friend has worked at Germany’s Gruenepunkt (Green Dot) agency for over 25 years. Her job is to work with foreign manufacturers and packagers to make sure that all products sold in German Markets meet some very strict packaging protocols. Perhaps I’m more aware, just because of our friendship.
I am no farmer. It just ain’t in my genes. But, I do manage to produce a few things…like tomatoes, which I don’t even like. lol And I enjoy buying my produce from the Farmers Market or from the local Co-op, which is far more ecologically careful. Even the discount grocer, Winco, displays most of their produce to the open air.
My apologies to the generations that follow mine.
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I know!! I feel your pain. I feel like we are digressing, things are getting too “sterile” which causes waste. It ‘s not natural. It’s distressing to see all of this plastic, and to either throw away/recycle a plastic cup used for only 20 minutes at a fast-food restaurant amid all of their styrofoam plates, to-go boxes and plastic silverware! I told my husband we should be able to go to a coffee shop with our own mugs, but he said then there would be more health and safety regulations, etc. etc.
When you say, “Do they not know that I will go elsewhere
to find vegetables in bins open to the air
to be freely hand-selected by shoppers?”, I think of WinCo where I pick out my brussels sprouts in open-air bins, for instance. Just go home and wash ’em!!
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Yeah. Really. I’m hoping this post gets to Albertsons via Twitter. They need to wake up. Their individually wrapped “organic” taters have been on display since the opened the fancy Broadway store, long before COVID was an issue. I really do walk out with very little in my bag.
Like you, I know I can go to the Co-op or Winco to by “free-range” veggies.
It seems doubly ironic that Albertsons chooses to celo-wrap Organic potatoes, but not regular potatoes. What IS their logic?
I do hope that Boise’s Orange Bag waste recycling program is actually working, because the Styrofoam and plastic utensils can at least go in the bags. And whenever possible, I turn down straws and plastic utensils. But even when one asks for the utensils to be held, more often than not, they end up in the to-go bag anyway, out of habit. We have really regressed in this regard.
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The only logic I can think of for wrapping organic in plastic and leaving the other stuff in its natural state is that they would like you to think the organic is precious and must be carefully wrapped and cared for to preserve that preciousness that you are about to pay a whole lot more for.
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Alli I think you hit the potato in the eye. It’s a marketing form of “value added,” which in this case is value lost. The benefits of buying organic or greatly outweighed by the harmful and wholly unnecessary addition of plastic. I don’t understand why they don’t see the irony.
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The more materialistic the country the more they use plastic. They generally use the term ‘free choice’ when it comes to bad things. Also a direct correlation might exist to spiritual dehydration and plastic. Perhaps there is someone out there who could also prove that the use of plastic relates to the use of sugar and morbid obesity.
In Australia we have Aldi which is a German chain of supermarkets. They still sell most vegies and fruit unpacked and you can use own green bag and avoid plastic. It’s hard going though.
I remember that biscuits could be bought by weight and wrapped in paper bags. However, not long ago shops were criticized for using paper bags as it killed off forests.
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Yes, there are the controversies, paper or plastic. But why either? Why not cloth? Reuse! And Individual potatoes? Good grief, they come in their own nature-made wrapper! Good old Aldi. It’s that German sensibility.
I love your observations, as usual. You are always spot on and have a brilliant way of saying it.
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Our biggest supermarket in Switzerland, Migros, sells little fabric net bags, reusable, to put fruit and veg in rather than using plastic bags – though these are still available. And like you, I don’t understand why so much is still pre-wrapped in plastic. We also have Aldi – and they do at least have a counter with recycling bins where you can unwrap stuff and drop the plastic and cardboard before you even leave the shop. BUT would it be so hard to dispose of the wrapping altogether? Is it just a matter of providing somebody with a job? And bosses with profits?
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That is really weird about Aldi. That plastic is costing extra money on someone’s bottom line…which, of course, probably is simply passed on to the consumer. But what a circle jerk.
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Nice Great Job
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Individually wrapped taters? That’s … obscene!
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Ya, isn’t it?
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Good questions! I hope that, if you vote with your feet, you tell them why. Fortunately, the store where I shop for organics doesn’t do that (not that they are perfect by any stretch of the imagination).
Btw, I have a friend who removes all the plastic (organic items or not) and hands it to the person at the register. I’m not sure how effective that is but she gets her point across.
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Oh Janis, that’s a great idea! I’ve tweeted this post to Albertsons Marketplace. Not a word…. I’ve also complained to the produce tenders, knowing that they have no control, but hoping they’d pass comments like this up.
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I remember when so many things were in glass and hated to see them turn to plastic. Plastic, plastic everywhere and worst of all in my opinion … in our ocean. Growing up my mother always used waxed paper and I still like to use it. But then it isn’t just the grocery items but that bubble wrap and plastic air bubbles that contribute as well. 😦
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Yeah, that glass or plastic dichotomy…both are a problem, really. Our community supposedly recycles glass, but in actuality the “market” for that hasn’t worked out and instead we’re just building a giant mountain of glass. If only we could go back to glass container deposits, in which manufacturers had to take back their glass and reuse it. I’ve heard the argument that the cost in both dollars and wasted water/cleaning solutions outweighs the benefits of reusing glass…I don’t know how well researched that is. But geez, if we could reduce plastics wherever possible. I love being able to buy bulk and to bring my own containers. But that is a level of inconvenience that a lot of people (and stores) simply won’t participate in. And of course, since COVID, my former container routine has been upended as stores don’t want their employees to have to deal with containers that come from outside the store. What a web of waste we’re caught in.
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A good post on plastic waste. Thank you 😊
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Thank you for dropping by! I’m glad I didn’t say something foolish.
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👍 You are welcome!
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Thank you for sharing
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