Taking out the trash

Not from NZ, but hilarious!!!

One thing that often annoys me at the supermarket is the excessive amount of packaging  on products.  My all-time favourite example of this is the individually plastic-wrapped bananas that appeared a few years ago.  Did they not realise that bananas come in their own natural packaging?!  The fruit and vege section of the supermarket seems to be full of this obsession with plastic - I always have a cynical laugh to myself when I see zucchini and broccoli pre-chopped and ready to use, placed in a polystyrene tray and plastic wrapped.  Are people really that busy/lazy that they can't manage the 1 minute that it takes to chop up a zucchini?  The most ridiculous thing about this is that the trays can't even be recycled, so they end up in landfill.   

  

Other awesome examples of packaging-mania include prunes which are individually wrapped in plastic then sold in another plastic container, plastic bags of pre-cut apple slices, snack bags of chippies each containing about six chips...the list goes on......  I would love to hear of other ridiculous packaging examples from other people! 

(NB: This website currently has a competition going for the best and worst NZ examples of packaging - you can win a winter weekend for two in Wanaka by entering the best nomination.)

     

With all this in mind, one of the things we wondered when we decided to stop supermarket shopping was whether we would reduce the amount of rubbish we were putting into landfill each week.  We try to reuse and recycle as much as we can, but were still putting out one 40L rubbish bag each week.

   

Last Sunday I went to put the rubbish out as usual, and found that the rubbish bag was less than half full.  A week later, the bag still isn't full, and I don't think it will be full by this Sunday.  I am intrigued by this, because we haven't really been making a conscious effort to reduce rubbish (at least, no more than we usually do), yet it appears that we have created less than half the rubbish we usually create.  There has also been less in the recycling bin, which is partly because we are saving bottles and jars to use for our own homemade things.

Green Island landfill (Dunedin)

The thing is, I can't quite figure out what has made the difference.  I can't think of any single change we have made that has brought about a dramatic reduction of waste, so it must just be the cumulative effect of lots of small changes.  We've bought a lot of dry goods in bulk, we are growing our own veges and buying other veges and fruit from the farmer's market where we bring our own bags.  We buy eggs from the farmer's market where we return our used cartons each week to be reused.  I'm making jam and reusing jars, and making a lot of our usual staples.  What I find interesting is that the reduction of waste has largely been a by-product of choosing to shop in a different way, rather than something we are intentionally working really hard at.  I'll continue to keep an eye on our progress, and will let you know how we go!