Groceries or plastic ...

Almost everybody shops for groceries on a daily or weekly basis, and in today's world, it is virtually impossible not to bring home with your shopping, huge quantities of unwanted plastic.

The photographs to the right are the result of a regular day's shopping in an ordinary neighborhood supermarket in Amsterdam, the Netherlands (each item is identified if you move your mouse over the photo).

This could be the shopping list of any person in the world at any supermarket anywhere in the world.

What do we go shopping for? Groceries or plastic?
How much groceries did you buy? How much plastic did you end up with?
What is left when your groceries are finished?
Why is a cucumber shrink-wrapped in plastic?
How many of these items were wrapped in plastic 10, 20, 30 years ago? Why are so many sheathed in plastic today?
Where does all this plastic end up?
How many times is this shopping scenario repeated in a country like the Netherlands (16.4 million), the United Kingdom (61 million), the United States of America (306 million), Planet Earth (6.75 billion)?
What are the supermarkets, food industry, and governments doing to address this problem?
If small shops like green grocers, bakers, fishmongers and butchers can do with less plastic, why can't supermarkets?

Click here to see the resultant plastic waste from this single day's shopping.