The Skinny's week of living packaging-free

Why don't people actually recycle? Try living without packaging, and then you just might

Feature by Jess Hardiman | 28 Feb 2017

Despite our arguably improved efforts, human consumption is still pretty fucking nuts. Our endless hunger for cheap meat, mindlessly blasting the heating out when we're sat in our pants, the payday myth that we should treat ourselves to something we don't need simply because we can. And, it seems, this sentiment also applies to our weird reliance on food packaging, where it's become all about the attractiveness and convenience of what we buy – boiling down, pretty simply, to vanity and laziness. 

The overuse of food packaging is sinister not only in its impact on the environment, but also in that it's arguably the most manipulative marketing tool manufacturers have at their disposal. Why buy bog-standard greens like cabbage, broad beans or courgette when you could buy them bagged up as a 'super green' medley? Why buy loose potatoes that, God forbid, someone may have touched, when you could buy clean, uncontaminated tatties that also purport to be 'PERFECT FOR MASHING'?

In a bid to re-evaluate our own consumption and cut down on waste, while also highlighting the importance of shopping locally and supporting small business, The Skinny office decided to try and go a week without any food packaging. A plan hatched with unbridled confidence while at the pub after work, we decided to go entirely cold turkey without the aid of any store cupboard staples like dried herbs and spices, chopped tomatoes or even olive oil. What about the stuff that comes in recyclable materials? Well, so many people don’t actually recycle it, so fuck it, none of that either. No food packaging whatsoever. Busy putting the world to rights, we were two pints in and feeling ballsy.

Sobered by the reality of our extremism, a week of trepidation led to a weekend of hardcore preparation: trudging over to Pollen bakery on a rainy Saturday morning for the week's bread; stocking up on fruit and veg at McCalls greengrocer on Church Street or Unicorn in Chorlton; asking Butcher's Quarter in the Northern Quarter to put 300g of chicken thigh meat into our nerdy little lunchbox; even getting on the tram to Prestwich, where Village Greens and its elusive self-serve hoppers of oats, seeds, lentils and rice can be found.

Throughout the week, the one thing that became most evident was that if you live without the convenience of packaging, you have to start being seriously creative. Rendering down the fat from a pork chop to cook with throughout the week, blitzing roasted celeriac to make a 'sauce' for a 'risotto' made from brown short grain rice, putting potatoes in a stew to thicken it instead of flour... And actually, that creativity was quite refreshing.

We'd not quite got our act together in time to investigate a batch of packaging-free ground coffee or any form of dairy (oops), and by mid-week we were seriously missing the refined sugar, cheese and caffeine that we've come to base our terrible diets on. We were accidentally #cleaneating. It took us until Thursday morning to crack – thank the bejesus that nowadays it's easy enough to take your own travel cup or Thermos flask to fill with coffee (we got ours from Fig and Sparrow and Coffee Cranks Co-Op), and on the same day, we also managed to source some blue cheese and olives from Lunya, after which spirits were considerably higher. 

While most people were supportive of – or at least intrigued by – the idea, we did face some backlash, ranging from gentle mocking to full-blown criticism: “It's pretty bourgeois, let's face it.” Yes, you're onto something there, opinionated-man-in-the-pub – but don't think we hadn't noticed ourselves, having been the ones spending the week as the pseudo eco warriors.

We spent more on certain ingredients than usual (though perhaps less on the grand scheme, being unable to splurge on a whim), so not great for those on low incomes or for those without time to hop on a tram to Prestwich every time they need brown rice. Also, with an absence of flavour, some of us relied more on meat than perhaps we're used to, and got through significantly more probably-illegally-deforested avocados – so in that sense we were essentially replacing one environmental problem with another.

But there were surprising positives outside of our impact on waste. In speaking to local businesses, we found a common theme: going without packaging helps them, too. Places like Pollen, whose bread comes in a heavy-duty brown bag that's great for re-using, and Butcher's Quarter, whose meat comes wrapped and in a paper bag, noted that customers don't realise the cost that packaging incurs to the business. 

It also makes you think hard about what and how much you need, realistically. Without packaging to extend shelf (or cupboard) life, meal planning became imperative, and having trudged around Manchester to source everything, each foodstuff became too precious to throw away. It also made us realise that, while many commodities like grains, meat, fish and cheese are a bit of a ballache to source without packaging, going without it for fruit, veg and bread proved to be an absolute doddle. We seem to have developed an ick-factor around buying something that another person may have come into contact with, which is pretty fucked up when you think about it.

The crux, though, was that in giving up all food packaging and becoming hyper-aware of it, the week made us so much more grateful for the materials we can recycle. It urged us to check what is actually does get accepted by recycling processes, as it varies council to council; some places won't let you recycle yoghurt pots or the brown trays that mushrooms come in, for example.

In short? Just DO your recycling – or, try living without it, then you ruddy will – and cut down on what you can't recycle or reuse. It's that simple. And, let's face it, not that fucking hard.

http://theskinny.co.uk/food