Is this a good idea or not?

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Supermarkets are under continuous pressure to cut down on plastic use, and they have responded by removing extra layers of packaging and making containers such as milk cartons or lemonade bottles thinner. Now several have announced that they have removed 30% of the plastic from a range of their products. ‘Great!’ you might think. But they have done this be omitting the lids from the little tubs in which they sell things like dips and spreads and replacing the usual lid with thin plastic film. So if you buy a tub of houmous, for example, or sour cream and chive dip, previously you could use part of it and then put the lid on and save the rest for another day. Now once you have peeled away the thin film cover, if you want to save part of the contents you would have to use something else, like maybe cling film, to cover it, or else transfer it all to some other lidded container, or in my case, use a lid from the stash you already have from previous tubs with lids. Some people might even through away the part-used contents, especially if they’re clearing up after a party or picnic and don’t have anything to hand to use as a cover. And of course the empty tub will also be thrown away because there is no use in keeping a tub with no lid (except perhaps to use underneath a small plant pot) whereas before I would have washed the tub and its lid and kept it to use for other things, generally for several years. So does this actually reduce plastic waste or not? Yes it reduces the amount of plastic the supermarket uses, but it gives consumers a useless plastic item that has to be thrown out, rather than a useful container that can be used over and over again. So really it’s just moving the problem further down the chain. And it will probably increase the amount of food waste, if people can’t think what to do with an open tub of something so they just chuck it out, and that’s another issue ‘we’ are supposed to be tackling. Of course I understand that I am in the minority and that most people don’t save plastic containers like this to re-use. But I wonder whether this change will actually reduce overall the amount of plastic used and waste generated from such products, or increase it? What do you think? What do you do with containers like these? All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2025.