There are too many fruit packages, so there should be reliable and effective recycling channels. Photo courtesy of North Night New Vision
Some fruits that ordinary people are used to picking are also packed into boxes. Cao zhengshe
"Not only can’t you choose, you can only buy a few in the box!" Ms. Chen, a citizen who wants to buy two pounds of apples, is very puzzled. Several fruit shops at home have been "upgraded", but it is more troublesome to buy fruits than before: many kinds of fruits are packed in plastic boxes, so you can only buy them by the box.
The reporter visited and found that this is not a case. Many fruit shops have begun to "dress" the fruits that were sold in the past: sealing them with plastic wrap, putting them in plastic boxes and putting them on plastic bags. At the same time of excessive packaging, it is inconvenient for ordinary people to shop. Why is the trend of fruit packing set off? What’s the logic behind it? For this phenomenon, what means are there to crack it? The reporter conducted an investigation into this.
phenomenon
Scattered fruits are packed in boxes.
In the "Baiguoxiang" fruit shop in Sanyuanli, the salesman picked up a bunch of grapes in his left hand, cut off the withered grapes one by one with scissors in his right hand, and finally put them into a disposable plastic box. Around him, layers of packed kumquat, apples and so on have been packed.
Many fruits that ordinary people are used to picking are also packaged and put into boxes. Nanguo pear, though marked with a catty of 7.5 yuan, has been wrapped in plastic wrap and repackaged in plastic boxes. Several customers picked it up one by one, studied it and put it down again, but no one bought it for a long time. "It’s all in the box, and you can’t pick it. I don’t know if it’s fresh!" A customer said. In the past, almost all fruits such as pears and apples were in bulk. After customers finished weighing and calculating money, the quantity and quality could be controlled by customers themselves. Now, the choice is much smaller. Take Nanguo pear as an example, one serving of seven or eight pears can’t be eaten at a time, and it’s no good to buy less; Want to buy more, can only buy two, a total of 16.
A similar situation is more common in many chain fruit shops. The reporter visited Guoduomeibei Taipingqiao Store and Huayuan Road Store one after another and found that most fruits, such as apples, pears, oranges and kiwis, were packaged, some were covered with plastic wrap, some were packed in hard plastic boxes, and there were relatively few bulk fruits. The reporter counted that there are about four or five hundred boxes of all kinds of fruits sold in boxes in each fruit shop.
Some consumers said that in the past, this kind of fruit packed in boxes was often sold online and other channels. "I went to the fruit shop to buy some fresh fruits, but I found that many fruits in the store were also wrapped and I couldn’t choose at all."
Explore the cause
Merchants for the convenience of stop loss chart
Why is the trend of fruit boxed sales getting worse?
A salesperson at a fresh supermarket named "Good Fruits and Vegetables" in Chaoyang Beiyuan said that these fruits are scattered when they are purchased, and then they are packed into plastic boxes after being transported to the store. "The packaged fruits are beautiful and clean, and fruits like oranges and pears are also bad in bulk."
"Those who sell fruit are afraid of bad fruit, which is the most crucial reason!" Zhou Zheng (pseudonym), the owner of a fruit shop, told reporters that the main reason for packing fruits is that merchants want to stop losses: First, when packing fruits, customers will not touch them back and forth like picking bulk fruits; Secondly, boxing is one of the measures to keep fruits fresh, which can extend the sales time.
The reporter noticed that the sales methods of fruit boxed are mainly concentrated in the newly upgraded fresh fruit supermarkets and high-end supermarkets. In traditional vegetable markets and cheap supermarkets, a large number of fruits are often sold in bulk.
Zhou Zheng explained: "There are also some boxed fruits. Because the packaging is exquisite and the price can be raised, merchants prefer to box them." The increase of packaging cost will inevitably be included in the price of fruit; However, some boxed fruits have extended the sales time, and the freshness will inevitably be "discounted".
decode
Reduce the amount at the source
The convenience of merchants also brings greater negative impact on the environment: in the past, ordinary people bought fruit and at most bought a plastic bag; Nowadays, the fruit is first covered with plastic wrap, then put into a plastic box, and finally put into a plastic bag, resulting in a "three-piece set" of packaging waste.
"About eight or nine thousand disposable plastic boxes can be used in a month." The person in charge of a fruit shop with an area of more than 100 square meters admits that the cost of these disposable plastic boxes ranges from a few cents to a few cents, and they are basically online shopping.
The reporter searched for "fruit disposable plastic boxes" on Taobao. There are countless kinds of goods. In the top three stores, a strawberry packaging box is selling well, each box contains 600 boxes, and the price is 215 yuan. The monthly sales volume of this product reached 1,387 boxes, and this packaging box sold 830,000 boxes in one month. "The materials of these plastic boxes are similar to mineral water bottles, and they are all non-degradable." The person in charge of this store bluntly said that a large part of these plastic boxes were sold to many well-known fruit fresh supermarkets.
"White pollution" has become a world problem. "Like disposable lunch boxes, fruit plastic packaging is mostly thrown away by ordinary people." Sheng Min, secretary-general of China Renewable Resources Recycling Association Recycling Plastics Branch, said that besides reducing the amount at the source, there should be reliable and effective recycling channels. If there is a sound garbage sorting system, plastic packaging will be used more effectively through recycling channels. For example, Europe mainly subsidizes the recycling of renewable resources through compulsory policies adopted by the government; Japan, on the other hand, does a good job of sorting garbage from the source by cultivating national quality.
Our reporter Cao Zheng
