Britain deluged under a packaging nightmare - Opinion While Gordon Brown tells us all how to cook

By Padma Kolumnout @ Monday, July 07, 2008 7:37 AM

Section - Telecoms/Fabric

Prime Minister Gordon Brown is a son of the manse and frugality is his middle name. On his way to the G8 conference he told the BBC that the British should plan their meals better to avoid wasting food.

Britain, which is fast becoming the model for 1984 style societies everywhere, even now are penalising householders who put the wrong waste material in the wrong wheelie bin and for overloading bins with packaging and the like. Some councils even have chip snooping to make sure that householders obey the rules. If they breach them, unbelievably, they can end up with a criminal record and presumably their DNA is added to the database the snoopers are building.

Which brings us nicely to supermarkets, to packaging and to Tesco, the giant supermarket chain which does everything. Over the weekend the IT Examiner learned that the CEO of Tesco in Bangalore, one Meena Ganesh, quit her job, which involved overseeing 3,000 staff here. Presumably some of these folk go into the minutae of packaging costs, slicing data for the marketing folk to digest.

Rather than attack people who more or less have to go to supermarkets to feed their families, isn't it time Gordon Brown went to the source and impose a packaging tax on Tesco, Sainsburys and the rest. This would drastically cut down on the contents of wheelie bins.

And rather than having to buy food in the quantities dictated by the supermarket giants including two for the price of one deals, these grocers could be forced to provide food in inexpensive eco-friendly packaging and with portions better tailored to a person's daily diet rather than contributing to the waste mountain and the growing level of obesity afflicting the UK and many other countries.

Perhaps Gordon Brown could start by telling us his own family's eating habits and whether any of the dishes the Browns eat are planned well in advance. X