Food retailers love packaging. Food retailers hate packaging. Do I contradict myself? Nope.

Food retailers love packaging because it keeps their products fresh longer. They hate it because it costs them money and has an environmental impact customers don’t like. So they have to keep using it, but they’ve long been seeking (and finding) ways to reduce it.

Fresh produce is the area where consumer complaints are most often heard. Do we really need to buy apples in a clingfilm-wrapped tray? You might think the answer is no, but you could be wrong. M&S has made a detailed assessment of apples packed in different ways, and they found that the energy profile for loose apples is some 16 per cent higher than that of apples sold in biodegradable four-packs.

The reasons are complex, but much of it has to do with the “invisible” packaging used in transport, which the consumer never sees. Furthermore, loose apples suffer around 20 per cent more spoilage. Total waste is 185kg per tonne for loose apples, 134kg for a biodegradable four-pack.

And according to the Cucumber Growers’ Association, unwrapped (“naked”) cucumbers are unsaleable after three days. Shrink-wrapping (just under 2g) keeps them fresh for two weeks.

It’s probably fair to say that without shrink-wrapping, the supply of cucumbers would shrink almost to nothingness.

This is not to say that improvements can’t be made. Since last year, the Co-op has been using a new packaging system (film-lined cardboard boxes) which saves eight tonnes of plastic a year, and allows it to present the green stuff in all its naked glory. Customer response has been good.

Does this make you feel better about packaging? No, I didn’t think so. The whole business is fiendishly complicated. What we think of as a villain is sometimes the lesser of two evils. In the Green Kitchen, things are not always presented in black and white.

greenkitchen@thetimes.co.uk

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