Bulk doesn't always eliminate packaging
(updated July 2026)
Bulk shopping has become widespread in our stores. You arrive with your reusable bag, jar, or container, you only take the necessary amount, and you leave with the impression of having avoided unnecessary packaging.
That is already a good thing. But there is a detail that is less visible: before arriving in the stores, the products are also transported in containers. Often large plastic bags weighing several kilos.
Waste has therefore not completely disappeared. It has mostly been moved from the customer's basket to the back room.
This is probably still more efficient than packaging each portion separately. A ten-kilo bag uses less material than fifty small packages. But if we really want to reflect on waste reduction, we must look at the entire chain, not just what ends up in our own bin.
At the time, I wondered why suppliers did not offer more reusable containers. Solid bins, washed and refilled, or a deposit system between producers and retailers. Some products obviously require airtight storage and strict hygiene rules, but that is not a reason to consider disposable packaging as the only possible solution.
Initiatives already existed, particularly returnable bottles for oil, vinegar, and drinks. This system was nothing particularly futuristic. It simply revived an old method that we had abandoned because disposable packaging was easier to manage.
Perhaps this is the main problem with some ecological approaches: they rely heavily on the behavior of the person who buys, whereas most of the choices have already been made before they arrived in the store. Customers can bring their own jars, but they choose neither the packaging used by the supplier nor the way the goods were transported.
Bulk shopping remains useful, but it should not be the end of the discussion. Reducing waste also requires working with producers, transporters, and stores to make containers reusable at each step.
Otherwise, we mainly get a cleaner bin at home and another one, a little better hidden, behind the store.