Change in law banning pre-packed fruit and vegetables at supermarkets - WTAF

[Epona]

Ah.

[The Dishwasher Saga]I bought a little 'tabletop' dishwasher with the intention of putting it under the sink. I measured the alcove and it should have fit. Bought a new ceramic sink. Paid a neighbour to remove the old kitchen cupboard and stainless steel sink and also knock out an old pantry cupboard on the other side of the kitchen.

Neighbour didn't unscrew cupboard and remove it carefully, he must've yanked it apart and pulled it out and caused a leak in the plumbing. So I was without a working kitchen sink for a while, was washing dishes in my bath, because I didn't dare trying to get anyone else to do it, because I have disastrous luck trying to get anyone remotely competent to do any work in my flat.

A friend eventually took pity on me and asked a plumber friend of hers to do it for me.

But then it turned out that the washing machine wouldn't fit on the other side of the sink under the draining board. Because I didn't realise that when the council were renovating the kitchens in other flats, they must've removed a row of bricks, so I'd assumed my washing machine would fit because lots of neighbours had their washer under that side of their sink.

So my new ceramic sink ended up mounted on a makeshift wooden frame by my lovely friend and her plumber friend who improvised to at least give me a working sink again, which I was (am) really grateful for.

But I've had the brand new dishwasher in a box for about 4-5 years now. And I can't install it until I take about 10 steps backwards and find a builder to remove a row of bricks so I can install the washing machine and a cupboard and the dishwasher.

I had a part-time job in 2022 and got a loan to do my tiny kitchen. I got someone out to give me a quote but they ghosted me. Then I changed job, then I was let go from my new full-time job after only a week due a conflict of interest. So then I ended up unemployed for nine months and spent my kitchen money on living expenses.

And I still have a knackered old kitchen in need of renovation, still no closer to installing the dishwasher that's still in its box, because fml. I just want a simple life but everything goes wrong.

It's like that thing about a battle being lost for want of a horseshoe nail, the whole dominoes disaster effect.

[/The Dishwasher Saga]

Fucking hell mate - that's worse than my "British Gas plumbing contractors (under their heating/plumbing insurance) pulled my kitchen apart and left me without a kitchen for more than a week" saga

 

[iona]

Clearly I'm not going to argue with you, I guess it depends on how long it's going to be kept. I try and support our local fruit and veg shop as well, but they could really do with bagging some of their stuff.

Yeah plus conditions when it was picked, time from picking to sale, etc... Fair enough if she felt she had to use plastic for that, it just surprised me is all. Salad mix and the more fragile types of lettuce are about the only thing we use plastic bags for here or other places I've worked/bought from, plus punnets for soft fruit but at least some places either use cardboard trays or take plastic ones back to wash and reuse.

 

[Elpenor]

On veg boxes, there a few ones from local farms / market gardens nearby that are fairly inexpensive (cheapest box is a tenner and that includes delivery) but I guess the cost is a relative thing, and not everyone has farms within a few miles

I basically make everything into soup anyway as I can’t really cook very well.

 

[WouldBe]

And that farm might be in Chile. For a product we grow in the UK.

Also applies to farms in the UK.

 

[Agent Sparrow]

Every few months or so I treat myself to going to a deli near my hairdressers. They have a range of tomatoes in various different colours, which you pull out by hand and put in a paper bag. It’s not just more environmental to take what you need and eschew plastic, it’s also incredibly satisfying to make your own rainbows. Sadly it is also too expensive and inconveniently located to be where I get tomatoes on a weekly basis.

 

[iona]

Increasing numbers of local veg box schemes are offering lower cost (for the same items) boxes for people who'd struggle to pay full price and/or letting people select their own items rather than get a set mix that changes every time. Absolutely not trying to dismiss anyone's totally valid reasons for not getting a veg box, just mentioning it in case anyone wasn't aware and happens to live near a scheme that could actually work for them when they assumed it wouldn't.

 

[smmudge]

Those bags of mixed salad leaves are pretty risky for food poisoning, I wouldn't eat them anyway!!

 

[JimW]

They even sell eggs loose here by weight, bit freaky at first. Hang the flimsy bag off the handlebars and they get home unscathed.

 

[Maggot]

Yes, it's much more expensive. My partner likes to get one, but I made the mistake at looking at the price per item recently.

There's a number of reasons why supermarkets are cheaper, including the fact that they exploit farmers and other food producers.

Farming News - Public pressure mounts on supermarkets as 100,000 back the Get Fair About Farming Campaign now set for Parliamentary scrutiny

Farming online news Public pressure mounts on supermarkets as 100,000 back the Get Fair About Farming Campaign now set for Parliamentary scrutiny

farming.co.uk

 

[Artaxerxes]

They even sell eggs loose here by weight, bit freaky at first. Hang the flimsy bag off the handlebars and they get home unscathed.

Morrisons do that here in some stores, they give you tearable cardboard to keep them in mind

 

[Epona]

I mean at risk of being controversial here, the issue is capitalism - there are multiple layers of production and distribution involved in getting food from the ground to our plates, and at each one there is someone skimming off a profit and driving round in a flash car and living in a fancy house as a result.
The people who work to produce the goods, pack the goods, distribute the goods, and buy the goods, are all worse off as a result of this theft.

 

[xenon]

I don’t mind washing up, it’s just cooking and shopping I find tedious. That said, I did buy some decent stuff at the local green grocer the weekend, all loose. I mainly get online deliveries. but have things like frozen spinach, peas and green beans.

 

[8ball]

We’re going to need rules about not squeezing the produce, and maybe something like a 5 second rule.

 

[xenon]

Shrink wrapped everything is bullshit though. Let’s be honest. You can still buy your 2 kg of whatever. Just take your own bag. Or buy a roll of bags.

 

[xenon]

What’s wrong with squeezing stuff anyway. My hands are clean. I don’t know about anyone else’s. But that’s why you have to wash it I guess.

 

[May Kasahara]

Properly packaged.
I'm probably out of the place in under 10 minutes with a week's veggies.

I'm not really seeing the problem here, are you that short on time that you can't risk spending maybe 10mins longer to weigh loose produce?

I sometimes use chard to make a cheat's saag. It works really well.

Fucking love chard. Which, as a veg box customer, is just as well I use it in curries, lemony pasta sauces, stir fries, or sometimes just as a side vegetable/topping for things like baked potatoes. Add enough lemon and garlic and it's always a winner.

Also, recycling is not the answer and not having the plastic packaging in the first place is much better, but just in case anyone doesn't know, you can take your soft plastics (film, bubble wrap etc) to most supermarkets now for recycling. There's usually some kind of receptacle in the doorway. We've been doing this for about a year and it is an immense amount of plastic. We hardly ever put our landfill bin out now.

We do this too, and likewise rarely have more than one bag of actual trash in our fortnightly collection. And it does horrify me how quickly the soft plastics bag fills up.

 

[8ball]

What’s wrong with squeezing stuff anyway. My hands are clean. I don’t know about anyone else’s. But that’s why you have to wash it I guess.

Avocado squeezers are the devil’s spawn.

 

[UnderOpenSky]

There's a number of reasons why supermarkets are cheaper, including the fact that they exploit farmers and other food producers.

Farming News - Public pressure mounts on supermarkets as 100,000 back the Get Fair About Farming Campaign now set for Parliamentary scrutiny

Farming online news Public pressure mounts on supermarkets as 100,000 back the Get Fair About Farming Campaign now set for Parliamentary scrutiny

farming.co.uk

Well yes, but many people do have to go for the cheapest option.

 

[polly]

Fucking love chard. Which, as a veg box customer, is just as well I use it in curries, lemony pasta sauces, stir fries, or sometimes just as a side vegetable/topping for things like baked potatoes. Add enough lemon and garlic and it's always a winner.

Hard agree, chard is lovely! My mum has a chard plant that is taller than she is Obviously totally inedible now but quite impressive.

 

[8ball]

Obviously totally inedible now but quite impressive.

Bit of a problematic way to talk about your mum.

 

[ouirdeaux]

Dunno. My mum was inedible but quite impressive.

OK, I didn't try eating her.

 

[Artaxerxes]

I made several attempts to go plastic free over the years, especially before Covid (hence the attempt with a veg box) and its just not possible without a) massively increased cost and b) massively increased use of time to find stuff.

Oh and c) radical and total shifts in diet and lifestyle.




Its very very hard to do. Its probably slightly easier now but only barely much better.

 

[Artaxerxes]

Supermarket stuff is also shit, I don't buy none-frozen stone from them any more, plums, peaches, that sort of thing are always rock hard and inedible. The toms are also shit as well but I get them on sufferance if I pay a bit more for the "finest" versions.

 

[story]

What’s wrong with squeezing stuff anyway. My hands are clean. I don’t know about anyone else’s. But that’s why you have to wash it I guess.

I agree, but I watch people squeezing things in the street market and they’re doing it wrong! Pinching stuff, gripping it, strangling it, it spoils the fruit/ veg and doesn’t really give you accurate feedback.

Press it gently with the flat of your thumb and the pads of your fingers. And smell it.

 

[story]

Avocado squeezers are the devil’s spawn.

Cos they’re doing it wrong!

Anyway the best way to check the ripeness of an avo is to gently check if the remainder of the stem will easily flick out. Like a scab on your knee that’s getting ready to be picked off. If it’s moving but still hangin on, bring the avo home and it will be ready tomorrow.

 

[quimcunx]

Chard is the future for our food challenged planet. Its like dr Who for its capacity to endless regenerate in a variety of ways. I've got a plant in the back garden that survived the beast from the east in 2018. And there was a small plant in the front garden that seeded itself in a street planter and now there are out posts of it in the gutter and in the cracks in people's front walls. I'm still not mad for its taste though I guess I should get used to it and perhaps start eating the ground elder that is so generous in the back garden

We sell it at brockwell. Put it in jugs of water and it still wilts within the hour.

I'll certainly be happy to not have to buy a bag of more than I need when the loose stuff runs out 10 mins after the store opens. Many things I'll put straight in my basket but with eg sprouts you still end up with a plastic bag.

I remember reading something about how many millions fewer 'one use' plastic bags were used after being replaced with bigger, thicker 'bags for life' but no mention of how many bags for life people were getting. How much actual reduction there was. I use old shopping bags for landfill bins so use more plastic than I used to. The nylon bags for life I've been using for many years never seem to last more than a few months before they're knackered or lost these days either.

 

[story]

Supermarket stuff is also shit, I don't buy none-frozen stone from them any more, plums, peaches, that sort of thing are always rock hard and inedible. The toms are also shit as well but I get them on sufferance if I pay a bit more for the "finest" versions.

I only ever buy soft fruit in the market, where they’ve had the chance to ripen.


polly Agree about the soft plastic. I was so glad when we were finally able to recycle it but it is a whole new chore. I make sure it’s clean, then it needs to be crammed into a receptacle, then transported to the supermarket.

gentlegreen I have to say I’m surprised at your take on this, because it seems so absolutely at odds with your lifestyle choices about using as few resources and making as little waste as possible. Soft plastic is such a scourge. It definitely leaves a massive carbon and pollution footprint, at every single level and layer of the environment.

 

[gosub]

That's nuts... criminalising Florette et al for selling something people want rather than let them switch to cellulose or some other bBiodegradable

 

[muscovyduck]

I'm in a position where things like meal prepping and veg boxes work for me at the moment, and when you're in a position like that, you very quickly forget how/why they don't work for everyone else

 

[nogojones]

Chard is the future for our food challenged planet. Its like dr Who for its capacity to endless regenerate in a variety of ways. I've got a plant in the back garden that survived the beast from the east in 2018. And there was a small plant in the front garden that seeded itself in a street planter and now there are out posts of it in the gutter and in the cracks in people's front walls. I'm still not mad for its taste though I guess I should get used to it and perhaps start eating the ground elder that is so generous in the back garden

you've inspired me to grow it again this season, after a couple of years break