The weekly food shopping is a frustrating experience when trying to be both ethical and environmentally aware. Not only is it extremely difficult to avoid single-use plastic items, but in order to do so we have to shop in many places to get the items we want. We go to our local market for our fruit and veg (although it is possible to get most of these things in Tesco without plastic wrapping), milk off the milkman, washing liquids from an ethical shop in Wallingford, bread made at home, white pepper from Waitrose etc. In short we don’t really shop in a single store, Aldi is closest we come to this, but wherever we go avoiding plastic is almost impossible.
So it was with great optimism, that I decided to try our brand-new supermarket in town last week: Lidl.
I have to say I was very disappointed. When I entered the store I was presented with a sea of plastic. Plastic bottles, plastic-wrapped fruit and veg and crappy promotional junk filled my view. It got no better as I went further in, with the expected meats, dairy and snacks all covered in the stuff. I got despondent; there isn’t much for the ethical eco-consumer here, I thought.
Still, it wasn’t all bad. Paper (or mostly paper) bags are offered at their excellent bakery. Although they offered packets of nuts in non-recyclable bags, there are three pick and mix type containers with almonds, cashews and peanuts offered with a metal scoop. The idea being you take as much as you need and get it weighed at the tills. Of course the bags were plastic, but I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t take your own paper bag. The third positive was Linda McCartney sausages in a card box.
In Lidl’s defence I went in two days after it opened. It was chaos and a frustrating experience. I may have missed some other positives, but on this visit I place Lidl with the other supermarkets in being too slow to implement positive changes that will benefit the environment. Pity. I had high hopes, but thinking about it, I’m not sure why.
Eco Family Life 
Thank you. I think there is more and more people now openly rejecting unnecessary single use plastic – and the more noise we make about it the better -eventually large brands/stores will have to adjust
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Agreed. That’s our hope, to get them to take notice
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I actually find our Lidl pretty good – I wonder if there’s regional differences (am near Aberdeen)?
I love the loose nuts – I use a cloth bag for those.
I take more cloth bags for the bakery section (the croissants are ‘all butter’ so no palm oil, and they freeze and reheat very well).
I can usually get a good variety of veg that’s naked (it’s also the only naked cucumber shop near us but admittedly, it’s hard to know what veg will be plastic free, making it harder to meal-plan).
The value oats come in a paper bag like flour so that’s our main plastic-free breakfast.
The muesli comes in just a bag, rather than a bag in a box (which drives me mad – it only needs one or the other! )
You can get fish fingers, frozen in cardboard.
The cheapest chocolate bars are in paper and foil so 100% recyclable. The next tier up is card with metallised paper (so 50% recyclable).
I buy the bierwurst sausage when they sell it, portion it up for sandwiches and freeze any I’m not using straight away – one small vacuum pack for ham vs lots of large square packets.
You can get ketchup in glass, and free-range egg mayo in glass.
The table salt comes in cardboard boxes.
The cous cous also comes in a cardboard box.
I think like all shops, it can take a while to find your plastic-free feet. I really want to see more consistent naked veg, wax-paper wrapped cheeses, and a bottle return system in every shop I go to :p
Would love to hear your top plastic-free products from other stores 🙂
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That’s really interesting – we had to go to the Lidl in Oxford the other day and could get hardly any veg not in plastic. I’m very impressed with the naked cucumber – even our local market doesn’t do that!
I agree with you about their bakery stuff, it’s lovely. I haven’t tried freezing the croissants though so I’m definitely going to try that. What do you freeze them in?
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