Living With The Packaging Culture Shock
By Yoko Asada
General English Style Haddock Jolt Endurance Shot Miracle Whip All-Out Squeeze! President’s Choice•••
The frozen-fish sections in Canadian supermarket aisles were another revelation of sorts. If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought the oceans were teaming with various-sized rectangular boxes. So it was a relief to come across the colorful, resalable stand-up pouch used to package the English Style Haddock fillets from Blue Water Seafood. With crisp, life-sized product photography making a nice aesthetic addition to my freezer, the resealable bag does a far better job of keeping the product fresh longer than the larger, family-size box formats that let too much air in after the initial opening. And as a handling bonus, you are less likely to find yourself with greasy hands while fishing the frozen portions out of the pouch, compared to the industry-standard boxes.
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As a relative newcomer, I was very encouraged to see some grocery stores in Toronto start charging a five-cent fee for disposable plastic bags. Quite simply, the old bags I used to get from my local grocery store were so weak and flimsy, that I often had to double-bag my purchases to ensure a safe trek home. Worse, they were useless in terms of providing a reliable solution for the kitchen garbage, with their inevitable tiny holes and air leks guaranteed to generate a yucky mess in and around the garbage pail. In contrast, the new grayish-green President’s Choice bags are not only larger in size—enabling me to carry more groceries—but are also considerably thicker and denser so that they can double-up as dependable garbage bags in he kitchen. As for the extra cost to the consumer, five cents may just be enough to make you kick yourself for forgetting to bring your own reusable bags to the store with you, but not really enough to really break the bank either. In fact, if most of the money will go to support genuine environmental causes, as Loblaw claims, then it will be five cents very well-spent indeed.
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