Shoppers react to reducing the amount of plastic packaging for meat products.
“But if we’re not willing to make that much of a concession towards trying to reduce our impact on the environment, we’re doomed.”
“And if the thought of eating something that ‘resembles a kidney’ horrifies you, then in all honesty, so should the thought of eating whatever unspecified body parts are going into mince” [Mike Rampton, the i-news]
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There’s a huge amount of debate over eating meat – for example: Will meat-free save the planet? – Vision Group for Sidmouth and What are the impacts of plant-based meat alternatives? – Vision Group for Sidmouth
And in parallel there’s also a huge amount of debate over using plastic – for example: How sustainable is recycled plastic? – Vision Group for Sidmouth and Where does East Devon’s plastic rubbish go? – Vision Group for Sidmouth
The two issues have come together over the last couple of days: Sainsbury’s defends new vacuum packaging for its mince that shoppers say turns the meat into mush | Daily Mail Online and Sainsbury’s defends efforts to cut plastic as shoppers call mince vac-packs ‘vile’ | J Sainsbury | The Guardian
The move has been an attempt to reduce the amount of plastic packaging for meat products – and yet the group A Plastic Planet would disagree that it will work:
“The old, rigid plastic packaging would at least have gone into recycling, however limited the UK’s systems are. The new vacuum packs will instead be thrown into general waste and end up in incineration.” Anti-plastic group has beef with Sainsbury’s vac pack mince over recycling – BBC News
Moreover, as Mike Rampton in today’s i-news points out, “If the thought of eating something that ‘resembles a kidney’ horrifies you, then in all honesty, so should the thought of eating whatever unspecified body parts are going into mince.”
He goes on to ask if this reluctance to change our habits even just a little means we should just ‘give up’:
The other most common complaint cited in the one-star reviews which have flooded the Sainsburys’ site — people have real beef with this —is that compressed mince takes a bit more work to cook. You need to either leave the slab out for a while to let it separate a bit, or put a bit more effort in with a spatula to break it up in the pan. Sure, that’s more effort. But if we’re not willing to make that much of a concession towards trying to reduce our impact on the environment, we’re doomed. If a few more pokes during the browning process at the beginning of a spag bol is simply too much effort, we might as well just give up now…
But if the negative response from a few loud customers leads Sainsbury’s to go back to more plastic, and puts other supermarkets off even trying to cut down on theirs, we’ve really messed this up. To be offered the easiest possible way of slightly cutting down on waste, a way which involves almost no compromise on the part of the consumer at all, and still deem it to be too much? That would be a huge mis-steak.
If Sainsbury’s vac-pack mince turns your stomach, then stop eating meat