Just a few hours after I posted a Pamela's Kitchen praising a strawberry company for a new snack-size clamshell, I saw another article shaming extreme packaging, with a single strawberry in a ridiculous nest of plastic selling in Hong Kong for the equivalent of $21US.
The article points out some inconvenient truths. There is a lot of excess packaging in retail today. When not disposed of properly, it's a huge problem.
But from a retail and consumer standpoint, produce packaging can be a valuable tool.
Consider berries, the poster children for clamshells. Selling berries in bulk can be a disaster, no matter how pretty and folks-y the display looks. They're delicate to transport, they degrade fast and they're easily damaged by grabby hands on displays.
Enter their savior: a sturdy, fully-recyclable shell that not only keeps them from getting squished, it optimizes the air flow to keep them as fresh as possible for as long as possible.
Strawberries fly off shelves, and the berry category is one of the largest draws in the produce department. Are we going to go back to bulk strawberries any time soon? Of course not. The shrink and waste would be preposterous.
This weekend, I stood in an H.E. Butt produce department and explained to a fellow customer that the pouch bag zucchini he was ignoring was not only nearly half the price per pound of the bulk product, but it was also lush and beautiful compared to the shriveled up bulk display he was picking through.
It's like these guys aren't just putting things in a bag to make them pretty or something. Oftentimes, it's because the bag helps the product last longer. Shippers and retailers alike spend a lot of time and money finding the most economical, least intrusive ways to package these items, as well. Clamshells are going top seal, and so are veggie trays. Bags are thinner, overwraps are minimized.
I can't make a reasonable case for every item I see, however. I know Asian pears can be delicate, but the foam nets around them seem excessive. A single, shrink-wrapped bell pepper also kind of chaps my hide, mostly because I can't recycle the wrapper.
We have to find a way to balance the benefits with the costs (both dollars and the environment) of packaging, and make our case with the public