The fact that it’s the consumer’s responsibility to sort their waste and to try and minimise its impact on the environment in the first place is completely wrong to me.
Most people in urban areas rely on stores for basic survival, and the vast majority of products we buy there come with unnecessary waste. It doesn’t make any sense to then tell these people “by the way, you’d better clean up that mess when you’re done because it’s bad for the environment”. If governments were truly concerned or willing to act, this waste wouldn’t make it into our homes in the first place.
If a company wants to sell a product, they should be held accountable for the waste that comes along with it. They should have to prove that they can reuse the waste and be incentivised to reduce it. If they can’t, they can’t operate.
Ecocide laws need to become commonplace, and the consumer should not be responsible for their waste if they haven’t got legitimate alternative options. I understand this community is more willing to do their part in this regard, but I don’t think it’ll ever be feasible to expect this from the wider population. We need to stem the flow, not just handle the mess.
Sometime in the past year or so I started wondering aloud about the amount of paper and plastic packaging that was thrown into bins by the checkout in my local supermarket. Pretty much any outer wrapper or carton that would have an inner sealed bag/box.
I genuinely didn’t understand what was going on, as I never saw other customers unpack and discard all this. A kind mastodon user then told me about a movement to put the burden of excessive packaging back on the shop rather than consumers:
By unpacking double packaged goods and discarding the outer box/wrapper in the supermarket’s bins, these shoppers make visible to the staff and (ideally) owner that this is superfluous and unwanted materials, and BTW you get to throw it out now.
I haven’t managed to track down any other information about this sort of everyday activism, but I think it’s an appealing way to protest the amount of waste going into our homes on a daily basis.
Very cool idea. It reminds me of how many receipts are printed just to be immediately tossed in the bin by the cashiers or customers. It’s maddening.
There was a trend here a few years back where they’d ask if you wanted a printed receipt. You can still get digital receipts instead if you’re on a loyalty membership I think.
What annoys me is when I use the self-service checkout I need a barcode on my paper receipt to open the automated gate and leave the shop 🙄
Sadly even if you reject the receipt in my regular shops they still get printed, the staff just toss them instead.
A wide adoption of a digital alternative would be great. It of course opens up questions around the impact of hosting them digitally, but I’m optimistic that would cost less than all the unnecessary paper, especially if the service was hosted on renewable power.