Ranting at a cauliflower: The madness of overpackaging

Is it normal to rant at a cauliflower in Checkers? No, probably not, but what isn’t normal – or shouldn’t be – is the way this cauliflower was presented on a polystyrene tray and wrapped up in noxious clingfilm, while stripped bare of its outer leaves which provide natural protection.

So yes, there I was, ranting at overpackaged vegetables. Again.

How many times do we have to have this conversation, South African retailers, because it’s not just Checkers?

The day before it was Woolworths and next week it’ll be Pick n Pay. Every time I come back home, I get into a temper at the supermarket. Every. Single. Time. This country is packaging crazy.

Take bananas, superbly wrapped by Mother Nature. Don’t even need washing. So why are they sealed up in a plastic bag, or shrink-wrapped in a box?

Not only is it supremely wasteful, but it also makes them rot faster as they sweat inside an airless bubble. Ditto oranges, potatoes, onions, carrots, beans, apples, the entire alphabet of fruit and veg…

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The price we pay for overpackaging

However, it’s not just fresh food but everything, everywhere. I even saw plastic boxes of toothpicks, each one individually plastic-wrapped.

Surely all this packaging makes the product more expensive by increasing overheads?

We pay for it now and then we pay again later, over and over, because it’s not the producers who must dispose of the excess waste and pollution but us, with government, environmental groups and charities all left picking up the mess, quite literally.

We pay for it in our taxes, in our rates, in our refuse removal bills, in our water, our air, and our soil, as landfills and dumpsites create mountains of mixed waste – plastic and compostables together – all of it turning to a toxic sludge.

And for what? For cauliflower wrapped in reconstituted fossil fuels.

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The industry’s responsibility

The manufacturers will argue it’s because of consumer demand and maybe they’re right.

Maybe South Africans don’t trust their food unless it’s triple wrapped in future pollution.

Maybe we’re falsely hygiene-obsessed. Maybe we prefer microplastics in our produce to the possibility of human touch. Maybe it’s convenience. Maybe we’re just lazy.

But whatever the nebulous reason, the industry has habituated the population to overpackaging, to this plastic life. Now it must reverse it.

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