Fruit and veg without plastic packaging? Supermarket deserves credit – leader comment

The supermarket Morrisons is to sell 127 types of fruit and vegetables without plastic packaging.

Morrisons is to become the first British supermarket to roll-out plastic free fruit and veg areas in many of its stores.

It is extraordinarily useful, so it is hardly a surprise that we use an extraordinary amount of it.

Plastic has become ubiquitous, so common that it’s hard to imagine a world without it, even though its use only really took off in the 1950s.

However, as we have increasingly started to realise, this most durable and malleable material is having a devastating impact on the natural world, particularly in our seas.

So the supermarket Morrisons deserves plaudits after announcing it is to sell 127 varieties of fruit and vegetables without plastic packaging.

Customers will still be able to buy packaged produce, but at least we are being given a choice.

The decision follows the success of a ten-month trial in three stores, which saw a 40 per cent increase in the amount of loose produce sold.

Other supermarkets should take note of this change and follow suit as soon as they are able and we, the consumers, should do what we can to avoid plastic-wrapped goods.

In our plastic world, there may be times where this is not possible or practical, but if we all try to do our bit, the damage we are doing will gradually diminish.