I understand that packaging food serves an important purpose in order to keep goods fresh and clean, but when does over-packaging food just turn into an environmental joke catering to a lazy society? At what point is it the responsibility of the shopper to avoid these products as well as the markets to not stock them? How much business would Wegmans lose out on if it replaced this display of plastic packed apple slices (that are then packaged a second time in an even larger package) with a barrel full of farm-fresh, ripe apples?
I try to avoid as much packaging as possible, and still I end up going home with cans of soup and bottles of pasta sauce. I understand that items need to be packaged. I try to purchase containers that can be recycled whenever possible. It is when I see these gross displays of over-packaging that I have to wonder who on earth would buy this stuff anyways? Maybe the marketer who thought up the idea of pre-sliced double packaged apple slices felt that parents would pop the smaller packages into kids’ lunch boxes. I get it.. let’s capitalize on convenience and let the farmers be green. How, as a society, did we make it this far without pre-sliced, packaged-twice apples?
Wegmans is a store that we have embraced as a community. It’s an incredible place to work, and offers us many items that we would not be able to find at other markets. It’s a one-stop shop that draws in countless numbers of shoppers on a weekly basis. I would hope that Wegmans would have an earth-friendly committee with one job in mind – to take into consideration the packaging practices of the manufacturers, growers and producers of the goods that we are subjected to. Wegmans has awesome buying power and should be able to, along with other markets, start putting some pressure on companies to rethink the way that they package goods. We all love convenience, but when do we say, “Enough is enough?”