It's hard to picture now, but one day, something other than coronavirus might change your trip to the grocery store.
Imagine entering your nearest chain grocery store to find nuts, pasta, flour, and fresh produce sold exclusively in bulk, with high-tech measuring and distribution methods specific to each product. In the cleaning and houseware aisles, there's laundry detergent, shampoo, and lotion getting dispensed into reusable bottles, which the store will clean upon return.
It's not totally impossible. But for now, David Pinsky, a plastics campaigner at Greenpeace, notes that if consumers want package-free options, very few, if any, major retailers provide them.
No one wants to get stuck with tons of excess packaging after buying some soap or pasta. Sometimes, though, it just...happens. That's not your fault: Grocery store experts note that most consumers focus on cost and convenience when they set foot in a store, and it's unlikely they look for the items with the least packaging.
For consumers focused on cost and convenience, it would certainly be a lot easier to avoid generating packaging waste if that waste just wasn't there in the first place. That's where package-free efforts come in.
Getting major grocery stores to go entirely package-free is likely a pipe dream, according to grocery store experts, plastics and waste experts, and small, package-free store owners. In all likelihood, big chains probably won't ever get there. But a radical overhaul to the way packaging is made, used, and dealt with in big chain stores? That's more possible — and likely a better goal.
What package-free efforts mean for our plastic addiction
The Environmental Protection Agency estimates(Opens in a new tab) that containers and packaging alone, which includes food-related containers, comprise over 23 percent of the materials going into landfills in the U.S.
That's a problem because the plastic packaging waste from retailers, particularly single-use plastics that are sometimes used for just seconds by a consumer, can last for lifetimes(Opens in a new tab) in the environment, says Pinsky.
Plastic pollution is already known to devastatingly harm(Opens in a new tab) our oceans(Opens in a new tab) and wildlife(Opens in a new tab). A 2019 study(Opens in a new tab) from the Center for International Environmental Law(Opens in a new tab) also found that greenhouse gas emissions currently produced when making and managing plastic threaten the global community's ability to keep temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius, and that the threat will become worse if plastic production grows as planned until 2050.
Grocery retailers could be part of the solution by moving away from single-use plastics, though. Part of the trouble right now is that supermarkets typically don't release data about their plastic footprint, Pinsky notes. Because of this, it's difficult to estimate the impact of going package-free at a given chain.
Instead, by focusing on recycling(Opens in a new tab) to address plastic pollution, Pinsky notes that retailers "often feed into the industry narrative that individual responsibility will solve the problem(Opens in a new tab); that the customer is to blame for the pollution crisis."
A 2019 Greenpeace report(Opens in a new tab), which Pinsky co-authored, evaluated the overall plastic footprints of big U.S. retailers, including Costco, Walmart, and Trader Joe's. Greenpeace did so based on each company's policies around mitigating their plastic footprint, actual reduction, and transparency concerning single-use plastic. With their metrics, no store scored better than 35 out of a possible 100, a failure in his book.
While we don't know every store's plastic footprint since complete plastic footprints are not available publicly, we've seen glimpses. While Kroger, Trader Joe's, Costco, and Whole Foods didn't provide Mashable with their plastic footprints when asked, Trader Joe's(Opens in a new tab), Costco(Opens in a new tab), and Whole Foods(Opens in a new tab) sent Mashable information about their plastic reduction efforts.
Walmart, for its part, says it will release data on its plastic footprint in a forthcoming Environmental, Social & Governance Report for 2020, marking its first year doing so, according to Walmart's press team.
When Kroger began phasing out plastic bags in 2019, National Geographic(Opens in a new tab) wrote "The company calculated that they handed out about 6 billion plastic bags a year, about six percent of the total number of bags distributed annually across the country. That’s the equivalent of about 32,000 tons of plastic, or enough to fill over 3,000 moving trucks jam packed with bags."
It wasn't always this way. Before the advent of the grocery behemoths we see today, how people typically accessed food involved a lot less packaging, says Marc Levinson, an economist and historian who chronicled the changes to retail juggernauts in his book, the Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Business in America(Opens in a new tab). Think of, say, a milkman reusing glass bottles, or a general store selling portions from bulk items.
The evolution of how Americans access and eat food(Opens in a new tab) is nuanced(Opens in a new tab), long, and, ultimately, fascinating(Opens in a new tab). Grocery aisles packed with ready-made food in disposable packaging marks the current chapter of this saga. It's a story centered on convenience and cost, say Levinson and Jon Steinman, the author of Grocery Story: The Promise of Food Co-ops in the Age of Grocery Giants(Opens in a new tab).
In plenty of cases, packaging is necessary to preserve, transport, and sell products, says Darby Hoover, a senior resource specialist for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) focusing on the food system. On the other hand, for lots of products, the packaging just serves marketing purpose, Levinson points out. A cashew in a giant tub is just a cashew, but a cashew in a package with a company's label on it becomes a marketable entity.
"A package is a billboard," Levinson says. "From the point of view of sellers, they don't want to go back to the days when products were sold in bulk."
In the 19th century, if you were trying to buy, say, molasses, your local grocer would simply pour molasses for you. There was no such thing as "name-brand" molasses.
What small stores are doing, and what big chains can learn
If you actively seek out items with less packaging, you're probably not going to big chains anyway. You're turning to alternative options that have popped up to meet this desire: package-free stores and delivery services; co-ops offering food in bulk; refillable stations for basics like shampoo and lotion. It's not like a big chain trying to cut down on packaging operates the same way as these stores and services (more on that later) but understanding what has — and hasn't — worked can help illuminate what could.
Take the Czech company MIWA(Opens in a new tab), which Pinsky says has features that could be appealing to a big grocer otherwise hesitant to adopt reuse models. MIWA's "smart containers(Opens in a new tab)" help automate the weighing of bulk purchases, as well as payment, and provide usage data, which he notes is valuable for retailers since they care about consumer behavior and restocking needs.
There are other innovations out there, too. In the realm of grocery deliveries, there's Loop(Opens in a new tab), which offers customers major label products like Häagen-Dazs, Crest, and Tide that arrive in a "Loop Tote(Opens in a new tab)." (Customers pay a refundable deposit for each package.) When the reusable containers are empty or in need of a refill, people send them back to Loop in the tote, where they're cleaned and reused.
CEO Tom Szaky says Loop solves the negative consequences of throw-away packaging, while "maintaining the virtues of disposability — affordability and convenience."
Typically, Szaky says, manufacturers aren't incentivized to care about their packages after they're with the consumer, which leads to a plethora of inexpensive, disposable packaging. Under Loop's system, though, the package for a product becomes an asset to the manufacturer: Szaky says manufacturers want to make packages durable and long-lasting so they can withstand as many reuses as possible.
As is, Loop can fill a major need with respect to eliminating packaging in grocery deliveries. (Steinman notes that in June, online grocery sales hit a record(Opens in a new tab) of $7.2 billion, with 45.6 million households using online grocery services.) Down the road, Loop also intends to expand its in-grocery store presence worldwide, Szaky says. (A spokesperson says Loop is first scheduled to be in stores in 2021.)
Big chains can also innovate after examining the challenges that smaller, package-free stores might encounter.
First, not everything can be sold through bulk or refillable methods, even at smaller stores. At Sustain LA(Opens in a new tab), a zero waste company that sells refillable home and beauty products, Leslie VanKeuren Campbell, the company's founder, and her team sell things like dish liquid, body lotion, and mouthwash at refillable stations at farmer's markets, in its store, and through deliveries.
She notes that it might be harder for a large chain to have a proprietary, spill-proof dispensing system than it was for her when Sustain LA opened its own brick-and-mortar shop. Even on her own store's scale, finding the right pumps for particular items proved difficult. Sometimes, depending on the consistency of what was being dispensed, pumps could get jammed or take a while to dispense. (To this end, there are particular pumps that work better for, say, shampoo, than other items.) At a small store, this is mainly a minor inconvenience, but for a big chain it could be a major deterrent, VenKeuren Campbell points out. At Sustain LA, if a customer gets frustrated, the staff can quickly help, but at a bigger chain, a dysfunctional pump could lead to a big loss in sales.
Then there's the way in which bulk items get converted into refillable or reusable formats. Steinman notes that when his local co-op tried to go package-free, they found that disposing of the containers for bulk laundry liquid being purchased actually carried a bigger environmental impact than what they would have saved by not using individual containers. (VanKeuren Campbell says Sustain LA typically refills bulk containers with vendors, or they donate big drums to animal shelters, or send them back to vendors.)
"Beans still get to the store in something," Hoover of the NRDC says. "There's never zero packaging."
What's stopping the package-free revolution?
In large part, Levinson sees the lack of package-free options as a logistics problem: For big chains with massive amounts of traffic each day, even seemingly minuscule decisions can have a rippling impact.
"For modern food retailers, logistics is extremely important, and packaging is important to decide those logistics," Levinson says. "There's a concern in shaving every hundredth of a cent possible."
For the Walmarts and Whole Foods of the world, it's not quite as simple as scaling up the same practices as smaller companies. They operate on a much bigger scale than mom-and-pop package-free options, Pinsky says similarly.
Take bulk items: Bread, coffee, and other dry goods could be sold in bulk in more places, Steinmain notes, in the sense that they can be sold without packaging. Logistical concerns get in the way, though: Levinson points out that cashiers need to weigh bulk items at checkout which slows down the line. It seems minor, he says, but for a big chain that would lead to a loss of sales that few seem willing to give up.
"The key stress test is to test these things for scale," Szaky, of Loop, says. "Any extra work; they're not going to be able to do it. It's just not going to be possible."
Ultimately, though, Hoover maintains that big chains need to address the root of the waste to really get packaging (and specifically plastic packaging) out of their stores: suppliers. In 2019, the Break Free from Plastic(Opens in a new tab) initiative conducted 484 cleanups in 50 countries (and six continents) and identified the brands whose products showed up as litter most often. The audit revealed(Opens in a new tab) the same brands had the most plastic waste for a second year in a row: Coca-Cola, Nestlé, and PepsiCo.
The Walmarts, Krogers, and Costcos of the world have sway with suppliers.
If a grocery chain actually wants to go package-free, Hoover notes it would have to communicate that desire to the suppliers covering their products with (potentially unnecessary) packaging. This is one place in which big chains actually have potential for package-free options in a way that smaller mom-and-pop stores don't: The Walmarts, Krogers, and Costcos of the world have sway with suppliers, Hoover notes.
Mashable asked Whole Foods, Walmart, Trader Joe's, Kroger, and Costco about the roadblocks towards package-free options. Kroger, Costco, and Whole Foods declined to comment.
Commenting on bulk methods overall, a Trader Joe's spokesperson told Mashable via email that Trader Joe's has evaluated the use of bulk bins in its efforts "to minimize waste and shift to sustainable packaging," but "with the expansion in the number of stores and focus on reducing waste, the use of bulk bins is not a sustainable option for us at this time." That said, the spokesperson maintains "[Trader Joe's is] constantly evaluating options and are committed to making improvements." Trader Joe's didn't comment on other roadblocks.
When asked about the potential financial deterrent of slow lines from weighing more bulk items, Walmart had no comment.
When asked about mechanical troubles associated with refill stations that might deter a larger chain from implementing them, Ashley Hall, director of strategic initiatives at Walmart, told Mashable via email: "We believe the issues can be addressed and it is a technology to watch."
When asked about reducing packaging by communicating a desire for less packaging with suppliers, Hall writes: "Since 2006, Walmart has been encouraging(Opens in a new tab) suppliers to reduce packaging in the products we sell," adding that the company distributes a voluntary survey(Opens in a new tab) to suppliers about their product packaging.
Levinson agrees that these giants can impact what suppliers make, including items with less packaging, but the likelihood of chains doing that out of the goodness of their hearts is slim, in his opinion. "They know what's moving, and what's not moving," Levinson says. "If they decide the 32-ounce [container] isn't moving, they'll tell the supplier. The consumer is calling the shots here."
Still, how can you call the shots when you're not able to decide what shots are available in the first place? Without more package-free options, you're stuck picking between a 16-ounce plastic container, or a 32-ounce one.
Where do we go from here?
Grocery store experts say that for some customers and grocers, forgoing certain forms of packaging, or using reusable containers when handling food and hygiene items, sounds perilous amid the spread of coronavirus, leading to resistance to package-free efforts. That concern isn't founded, necessarily — a cohort of 125 virologists, epidemiologists, and health experts recently said consumers can safely use reusable containers during the pandemic(Opens in a new tab). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides specific advice for preventing the spread of the virus while grocery shopping(Opens in a new tab), adding: "There is no evidence that food or food packaging(Opens in a new tab) play a significant role in spreading the virus in the United States."
Still, some states, counties, and cities, have rolled back plastic bag bans which went into effect before the pandemic. (Additionally, in the early days of the coronavirus' spread in the U.S., the Plastics Industry Association lobbied(Opens in a new tab) the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to declare that bans on single-use plastics presented a public safety risk.)
"In a way, we've gone back many decades," Steinman says, in reference to the increased(Opens in a new tab) use of single-use plastics in stores during the pandemic. "I'd like to think we'd be able to move past this, and get back on track with package-free shopping."
Pinsky sees a decrease in momentum as "largely temporary." If there's one thing the pandemic quickly revealed for people, it's that our sense of "normal" is hardly static.
There have been massive overhauls to the ways in which we get basic goods in the past, but where the current moment will take package-free options down the road remains to be seen. It could go many ways: Maybe the plastics industry, reinvigorated by single-use plastic ban reversals amid the pandemic, will continue its stronghold; maybe consumers, now more aware of the systems in which they live, will push back on their limited options for accessible, package-free food. Maybe packaging will be the next lobbying effort in statehouses and city halls across the country, after plastic(Opens in a new tab) bags(Opens in a new tab) and styrofoam(Opens in a new tab) clamshells.(Opens in a new tab)
"It's really a turning point for the world that we need," Pinsky says, referencing both the Black Lives Matter movement and the pandemic. "We need to rethink the way the world has been operating."