which bananas would you buy?

 

http://food.oregonstate.edu/images/fruitveg/banana/banana016.jpg

 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/25/Banana_sorting.jpg

 

are you bothered about ethics, the environment and packaging when you are buying food?

 

do you agree with the Independents campaign for less waste packaging?

We shop at tesco online, and just buy their bananas. No idea where they're from. If I was buying them in a shop I'd get slightly green ones because they will last longer.

We shop at tesco online, and just buy their bananas.

 

do they put everything you order in a different plastic bag? or is that odecco? so not to let different food stuff touch each other

do they put everything you order in a different plastic bag? or is that odecco? so not to let different food stuff touch each other

 

Everything's in individual bags yeah, but then all in the same carrier bag.

I have no idea where the bananas I buy come from, I just pick up what the nicest condition ones are on the shelf

Yeah, I also don´t have the habit to investigate where fruits come from before I buy, but I wouldn´t buy if I knew it was taken from a farm which uses slavery work, even if it´s much cheaper.

Everything's in individual bags yeah, but then all in the same carrier bag.

 

so when you say individual bags does that includ things that dont need to be rapped like nana's and veg like Morrison's infamous overrapped Swede

 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/da/Rootveg_rutabaga.jpg

 

that is a rutabaga not a scandinavian in two fleeces obv :lol:

I don't really see the benefits of refusing to buy from places that use slave labour, slave labour is not nice but if orders are lost because of people refusing to buy slave labour gathered food that is not going to help the slaves who will be left to starve with no welfare state and does not help the economy of that country leading to hyper inflation and who loses then ? the poorest

 

By buying produce that is produced by slaves we are handing slaves a lifeline

so when you say individual bags does that includ things that dont need to be rapped like nana's and veg like Morrison's infamous overrapped Swede

 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/da/Rootveg_rutabaga.jpg

 

that is a rutabaga not a scandinavian in two fleeces obv :lol:

 

I dont really understand what you're going on about. And it's wrapped, not rapped.

I dont really understand what you're going on about. And it's wrapped, not rapped.

 

lol!

 

i thought heput nana's veg!! i dont know what hes talkiing about either. but its best to just agree!

I said the second on both.

Asda Bananas whatever they are lol

 

voted first then second one

I dont really understand what you're going on about. And it's wrapped, not rapped.

 

the campaign so far had attracted these views:

 

'We live near swede fields. Yet we were offered shrink-wrapped Tasmanian swede'

Published: 24 January 2007

Toiletries & medicines

 

Why do we not use bars of soap? It has been liquefied so that it needs to be put in a plastic bottle.

 

John D Anderson

 

In buying four blocks of Cussons soap it was wrapped in plastic, with the soap in card and each block individually wrapped in plastic.

 

Charles Edwards

 

In a 32-tablet box of Nurofen Plus, eight tiny tablets are wrapped in four plastic and silver foil strips that could easily take 16 each.

 

Richard Wilson

 

Cosmetics manufacturers used to sell you a compact which you could later refill. Nowadays you have to buy the whole shebang.

 

Patricia Franks

 

John Frieda Frizz-Ease hair serum - why do they have to encase it in a plastic tray then place it inside a card box?

 

Holly Mcenaney

 

Until recently Zivorax (cold sore cream) was packed in a small cardboard box - now it is in a cardboard box which is in a blister pack.

 

Joy Roffey

 

Plastic bags

 

What about giving up the ubiquitous plastic shopping bag? Shoppers should at least make the effort of using the larger, reusable bags provided by most stores.

 

M Raffaelli

 

Clothes

 

Tesco shirts come folded inside an unrecyclable plastic pocket, which has an un-reusable plastic hanger attached to the top. Inside is a piece of cardboard to keep the shirt flat, and another piece of card, or sometimes plastic around the collar.

 

Neil Holland

 

When I went to buy a £3.50 pack of five pairs of tights, I was horrified to find that each pair of tights is now individually wrapped within the packaging.

 

Diana Randell

 

Tea, coffee & cold drinks

 

Each tea bag in a packet of Fennel Heath & Heather herbal infusions has its own individual card label and a mini-staple to hold it all together.

 

Tish Rickard

 

Nescafé comes in a glass jar. I get home and tip the contents into my coffee set and throw the jar in the bin.

 

Julie Daniels

 

Water in bottles is about 1,000 times more expensive than tap water, which has no need for any packaging.

 

Dick Lexmond

 

Schweppes tops each tonic water bottle with "silver" plastic spirit measures. I leave them at the check out.

 

W. Lazenby

 

Poultry, meat & fish

 

Waitrose chickens are put in a thick plastic container rather than in cling film.

 

Louise Perry

 

Four vacuum-packed venison steaks from Waitrose are contained within a hard plastic non-recyclable or biodegradeable container.

 

Graeme Kay

 

Fish from our local market, comes wrapped in paper, but from a supermarket two salmon fillets are in a thick plastic tray, wrapped in more plastic and cellophane.

 

Sarah Marsden

 

Ready meals & take-aways

 

Marks and Spencer's Caesar salad bowls come in a massive plastic bowl and only consist of some Cos lettuce and a bit of cheese.

 

Janet

 

Subway sell their food wrapped in white paper, then wrapped in branded paper, then put in a plastic bag.

 

Catriona McAleer

 

At Sainsbury's deli counters the savouries soaked in olive oil are put into an oversize plastic pot and the oil appears to react with the plastic and leaks in your fridge.

 

Paul Wilson

 

Snacks

 

Pringles minis consist of about 10 Pringle crisps sitting in a tiny unrecyclable tray, wrapped in unrecyclable plastic wrapping. They are sold in multipacks, so are then wrapped in another layer of plastic.

 

Lucie Evans

 

Until recently, Humzingers (foil wrapped fingers of dried fruit) came in a perfectly functional, small cardboard box. Now, they come on a plastic tray, wrapped in more plastic.

 

Joanna Chick

 

Fruit Bowl "Fruit Flakes" on their own cost about 36p, but buy a pack of five to save a few pence and the waste is incredible ... each pack is individually wrapped, laid on a plastic container with another layer over the top.

 

Ms S Dashper

 

Dairy

 

I want milk in a re-useable glass bottle - the plastic cartons get all gunky on the top.

 

Paul Clark

 

In the past six months I have only been able to get organic milk in plastic bottles. I used to light my woodburner with the cardboard cartons.

 

Kate Hellyar

 

Fruit & veg

 

A sprig of fresh Coriander from Sainsbury's is in a clear plastic container, which is also wrapped in plastic!!

 

Graham Duff

 

Today I observed a woman pick up two new carrier bags at Sainsburys so she could put her hands inside them to bag washed carrots.

 

Kate Corwyn

 

At a supermarket in Edinburgh I saw a turnip that was branded as "grown in Scotland". It was shrink wrapped, and the label said: "packaged in Kent".

 

Mark Sydenham

 

Despite many swede fields near by, the Co-op in Aberfoyle offers shrink-wrapped swede, from Tasmania.

 

Prof Stephen Baron

 

In Asda, I have seen coconuts shrink-wrapped.

 

Melissa Gooch

 

Baby food

 

I buy Cow and Gate biscuits for my nine-month-old son. They are only finger biscuits, but are put in an enormous bag then encased in a redundant cardboard box.

 

Dr Sharon Holmes

 

Bread, sweets and biscuits

 

Major brand bread packaging shows a picture of a loaf, rather than allowing you to see the actual bread.

 

Doug Leith

 

The Duchy of Cornwall Biscuits for Cheese have a cellophane wrap, an expensively printed box of high-quality card. Inside that is a leaflet and a plastic mould holding eight cellophane-wrapped packages, each containing four biscuits.

 

Alison Latham

 

Ferrero Rocher chocolates are in a thick plastic box with a cardboard wrapper. Inside, a moulded layer of plastic fits between the layers and each chocolate is individually wrapped.

 

Achsa Griffiths

 

Twin packs of Jacobs cream crackers - two packets of biscuits that are also sold separately, bound together in an extra plastic layer.

 

Catriona Moore

 

CDs

 

If CDs were packed in the same way as singles used to be we would be able to fit 10 times more on our shelves.

 

Liz White

 

DIY

 

A 10-amp fuse is packed in super-strong plastic that is impossible to get into.

 

Angie Brooker

 

Toys

 

We wrestled for an hour against the sharp plastic packaging, the hundreds of metal ties, screws, cardboard, trying to open three Star Wars and two Dr Who toys from Toys'r'us.

 

Nathalie Blyth

 

Bratz dolls need a ridiculous level of packaging removed to use them.

 

Tony Hogan

 

Pet food

 

You can get cat food in disposable plastic dishes so owners don't have to wash up.

 

Beth Rich

 

General

 

A rucksack was wrapped in plastic "for protection" and I was asked if I would like a bag to carry it home.

 

Eva Marschewski

 

M&S black bin sacks are packaged inside a moulded clear plastic covering.

 

Andrew Potter

 

Reader Hilary Sutherland, 52, is an events organiser from Nottingham

 

"I have a particular gripe against the manufacturers of Olay face products, particularly their moisturiser and anti-ageing creams. They are, don't get me wrong, wonderfully rejuvenating. But I don't need them packaged in a cardboard box. OK, I am going to recycle it, but it could have saved the branch of a tree.

 

"The fact is, there is already packaging round the product, which is clearly not going to leak or get punctured because the container is made from very solid plastic. I have used the products since I was 17 and they are the best products for me so I don't want to sacrifice that but as I've become more and more aware of environmental waste, I don't want to have to throw out packaging unnecessarily. Looking at packaging, it makes you think back to the days when things came in paper bags, including things like vegetables, which could breathe rather than be sweating in plastic."

 

The manufacturers of Olay declined to comment.

 

How you can help

 

Do you have an example of absurd packaging? Have you been infuriated by the waste with something you bought? If so, tell us and we will highlight it in The Independent and take it up with the companies concerned. Send your examples to waste@ independent.co.uk

^ I'm not really gonna read all that...

lol, why bother posting that??? like anyones gonna read it???? but im sure it was action and info packed

i read some of it and think i got the jist of it........ ;)

I always buy fairtrade bananas, as that seems, well, the fairest thing to do.

What a random thread, a topic about bananas :rofl:

I don't really see the benefits of refusing to buy from places that use slave labour, slave labour is not nice but if orders are lost because of people refusing to buy slave labour gathered food that is not going to help the slaves who will be left to starve with no welfare state and does not help the economy of that country leading to hyper inflation and who loses then ? the poorest

 

By buying produce that is produced by slaves we are handing slaves a lifeline

 

You bring up a good point. The Economist agrees with you...

 

Good food?

Dec 7th 2006

From The Economist print edition

 

If you think you can make the planet better by clever shopping, think again. You might make it worse

 

 

“You don't have to wait for government to move... the really fantastic thing about Fairtrade is that you can go shopping!†So said a representative of the Fairtrade movement in a British newspaper this year. Similarly Marion Nestle, a nutritionist at New York University, argues that “when you choose organics, you are voting for a planet with fewer pesticides, richer soil and cleaner water supplies.â€

 

The idea that shopping is the new politics is certainly seductive. Never mind the ballot box: vote with your supermarket trolley instead. Elections occur relatively rarely, but you probably go shopping several times a month, providing yourself with lots of opportunities to express your opinions. If you are worried about the environment, you might buy organic food; if you want to help poor farmers, you can do your bit by buying Fairtrade products; or you can express a dislike of evil multinational companies and rampant globalisation by buying only local produce. And the best bit is that shopping, unlike voting, is fun; so you can do good and enjoy yourself at the same time.

 

Sadly, it's not that easy. There are good reasons to doubt the claims made about three of the most popular varieties of “ethical†food: organic food, Fairtrade food and local food (see article). People who want to make the world a better place cannot do so by shifting their shopping habits: transforming the planet requires duller disciplines, like politics.

 

Buy organic, destroy the rainforest

Organic food, which is grown without man-made pesticides and fertilisers, is generally assumed to be more environmentally friendly than conventional intensive farming, which is heavily reliant on chemical inputs. But it all depends what you mean by “environmentally friendlyâ€. Farming is inherently bad for the environment: since humans took it up around 11,000 years ago, the result has been deforestation on a massive scale. But following the “green revolution†of the 1960s greater use of chemical fertiliser has tripled grain yields with very little increase in the area of land under cultivation. Organic methods, which rely on crop rotation, manure and compost in place of fertiliser, are far less intensive. So producing the world's current agricultural output organically would require several times as much land as is currently cultivated. There wouldn't be much room left for the rainforest.

 

Fairtrade food is designed to raise poor farmers' incomes. It is sold at a higher price than ordinary food, with a subsidy passed back to the farmer. But prices of agricultural commodities are low because of overproduction. By propping up the price, the Fairtrade system encourages farmers to produce more of these commodities rather than diversifying into other crops and so depresses prices—thus achieving, for most farmers, exactly the opposite of what the initiative is intended to do. And since only a small fraction of the mark-up on Fairtrade foods actually goes to the farmer—most goes to the retailer—the system gives rich consumers an inflated impression of their largesse and makes alleviating poverty seem too easy.

 

Surely the case for local food, produced as close as possible to the consumer in order to minimise “food miles†and, by extension, carbon emissions, is clear? Surprisingly, it is not. A study of Britain's food system found that nearly half of food-vehicle miles (ie, miles travelled by vehicles carrying food) were driven by cars going to and from the shops. Most people live closer to a supermarket than a farmer's market, so more local food could mean more food-vehicle miles. Moving food around in big, carefully packed lorries, as supermarkets do, may in fact be the most efficient way to transport the stuff.

 

What's more, once the energy used in production as well as transport is taken into account, local food may turn out to be even less green. Producing lamb in New Zealand and shipping it to Britain uses less energy than producing British lamb, because farming in New Zealand is less energy-intensive. And the local-food movement's aims, of course, contradict those of the Fairtrade movement, by discouraging rich-country consumers from buying poor-country produce. But since the local-food movement looks suspiciously like old-fashioned protectionism masquerading as concern for the environment, helping poor countries is presumably not the point.

 

Appetite for change

The aims of much of the ethical-food movement—to protect the environment, to encourage development and to redress the distortions in global trade—are admirable. The problems lie in the means, not the ends. No amount of Fairtrade coffee will eliminate poverty, and all the organic asparagus in the world will not save the planet. Some of the stuff sold under an ethical label may even leave the world in a worse state and its poor farmers poorer than they otherwise would be.

 

So what should the ethically minded consumer do? Things that are less fun than shopping, alas. Real change will require action by governments, in the form of a global carbon tax; reform of the world trade system; and the abolition of agricultural tariffs and subsidies, notably Europe's monstrous common agricultural policy, which coddles rich farmers and prices those in the poor world out of the European market. Proper free trade would be by far the best way to help poor farmers. Taxing carbon would price the cost of emissions into the price of goods, and retailers would then have an incentive to source locally if it saved energy. But these changes will come about only through difficult, international, political deals that the world's governments have so far failed to do.

 

The best thing about the spread of the ethical-food movement is that it offers grounds for hope. It sends a signal that there is an enormous appetite for change and widespread frustration that governments are not doing enough to preserve the environment, reform world trade or encourage development. Which suggests that, if politicians put these options on the political menu, people might support them. The idea of changing the world by voting with your trolley may be beguiling. But if consumers really want to make a difference, it is at the ballot box that they need to vote.

 

There's a much longer, more in depth article on the same topic (from the same issue) I can post if anyone is interested...

What a random thread, a topic about bananas :rofl:

 

 

but its not about bananas, its about ethics in food production. bananas was used as an illustration...

 

i think that we HAVE to consider ethics, we have to consider the environmental impact of our food production.

 

packaging is a real problem as our landfill sites are all but full. its gonna cost to get rid of packaging that we dont want nor need.

 

i think that ethics will become a big issue, as our food scorces need to be environmentaly sound to help prevent global warming...