Ethics Trading

Remember Bad Tesco? Well, I’m still narked at the plastic bottles for lovely olive oil but I haven’t got round to investigating alternatives and until I do then I have no real cause for complaint really do I? Erm especially as I think Lidl still do olive oil in glass and I haven’t been in there in months because I don’t want to add more driving to my shopping.It’s a toughie isn’t it? Petrol, fumes and pollution to chase down the lower waste, more eco friendly solutions or compromise and reduce on the driving instead.

So, my weekly shop involves a drive into town, park at the multi-storey and walk through the pedestrian shopping centre with my trusty trolley. In town we have a local greengrocer, cheese shop and butchers as well as a good market. The grocers and fruit and veg stalls all allow us to use our own bags and to take produce with no packaging. The cheese shop and butchers do put things in plastic and I haven’t broached the subject of taking our own containers and I keep meaning to. The staff are really friendly and I’m sure it’d be fine.

Anyway, after we finish in town, often involving a trip to the library, we take the car off to tesco to finish off. Since they opened up the new store, which is the size of a small village, I’ve been driving past the swishy looking new recycling facility and scowling at it because there’s not much room to park and because I always forget my plastic bottles.

But not today! We stamped on our washed out milk bottles and packed them, with a couple of squash bottles, into a nice cloth bag and took them with us. It’s not as complicated as it looks and it is rather Star Trek-ish. First you scan your clubcard and it registers you. Then it tells you to “Please insert your first item” and when you do it scans that and tells you if your offering is acceptable. Our milk bottles were rejected until we peeled the labels off. *blush* But I’m easily pleased with a bit of shiny tech…..

It’s not hard to do and we will be saving up, cleaning out and stamping on all plastic bottles from now on and taking them with us on our weekly tesco trip. And, actually, that does rather solve the dilemma of extra driving for glass bottled olive oil or get the plastic one and then recycle it…. Although I really would rather not have to get to the recycling stage with things, I’d rather things were sustainable or compostable or reusable to start with.

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