Ethically Kate: Excess supermarket packaging - what can I do about it?

Shop the outside supermarket aisles for food which tends to have less packaging. Photo/ Getty Images.

Use your purchasing power to encourage change in grocery packaging, says Kate Hall.

I admire activists who remove the packaging of their food at checkout and take only the edible stuff home with them. It’s an extreme act, I know, but it’s also simply saying to supermarkets, “Hey, I want to eat this food but I don’t need the packaging, thanks.”

In lieu of creating a scene at the supermarket, there are a few practical things to do.

Firstly, shop the outskirts of the supermarket. Supermarkets are roughly laid out in an oval shape and don’t vary too much from store to store. The stuff around the outside is generally less packaged. I’m talking about the fruit and vegetables, the bulk bins and the deli (hopefully your local lets you BYO container).

Once you’ve stuck to the less packaged stuff on the outside aisles, continue your low-waste efforts by controlling what you can control. Bring your own reusable shopping bags and vegetable bags. Buy food thoughtfully so it won’t rot in the bottom of your fridge. Choose paper and glass packaging. Look out for the numbers 1, 2 and 5 on plastic packaging as these are more readily recycled in your kerbside bin than numbers 3, 4, 6 and 7.

Finally, if you’re still annoyed at supermarkets, try these two things that aren’t as extreme as taking your bread out of its bag and handing the plastic to the cashier but will still make a big difference.

Email your local supermarket and tell them what you would like to see (less waste!). Then when you’re next shopping, scour the discount sections, buy the individual bananas, and grab the stuff that’s about to go beyond its “best-before” date.

One of the most wasteful aspects of supermarkets is the perfectly-good-to-eat food that gets thrown in the rubbish bin. When you buy things like single bananas and food a day away from its best-before date (which doesn’t mean it’s about to go off by the way), you’re likely to be saving them from ending up in landfill.