Letters | 25 January 2018

Reasons to use less plastic

Sir: Yes, packaging from petrochemicals is bad, but what if we set out to use less of it? Like Ross Clark, I was once dismayed by wilting vegetables in my village shop (‘The great plastic panic’, 20 January). Then the shop closed, to be replaced by a community shop and café which stocks produce from local farmers and steers away from excess plastic packaging. This is not just a middle-class rural luxury: grass roots movements such as Food Assemblies are springing up in major cities, enabling shoppers to bring their own bags and buy food straight from producers who don’t put their vegetables in plastic costumes. These may be micro-gestures, but they point to the need for a root-and-branch rethink of packing in our food industry. It would be heartening, for a start, to see British supermarkets introduce dispensers for dry foodstuffs, and incentivise customers to re-use bottles and containers, as is common practice on the continent.