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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] market supplies: plastic bags, berry baskets, etc.

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  • From: Road's End Farm <organic87 AT frontiernet.net>
  • To: jaysleichter AT yahoo.com, Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] market supplies: plastic bags, berry baskets, etc.
  • Date: Wed, 13 May 2009 09:55:41 -0400


On May 13, 2009, at 12:06 AM, jay sleichter wrote:

Liz,
That is the weirdest comment I have ever heard.  "If you are organic, you can't reuse bags?"  That doesn't make sense. Isn't that kind of the opposite of what most people,who buy organic, think and are supporting?  Use less resources, chemicals, fertilizer, better for you and the environment, but you must use this new bag and waste resources or your own to transport your produce home in.

Besides, if the bag was dirty, what is the reasoning behind this.


The reasoning is that used bags and used boxes may have non-permissible chemicals on them, as those chemicals may have been on the previous contents of the containers. Therefore, it's advised (I'm not sure if it's required) not to use secondhand containers to pack into, unless they're made of a material that can be washed out before use. Washing plastic bags is usually impractical.

There's also the sanitary question, that there's no way to be sure that what was in the bag previously was itself clean, and not harmful for human consumption. People put all kinds of things in grocery-style bags; not all of them are something that you want to eat after. I think (though am not certain) that grocery stores are forbidden to take in used plastic or paper bags and hand them out again to different customers than the ones who brought them in, for that reason.

It is of course OK to pack, for a given customer, into the bag that that specific customer brings. I've found that it's getting more and more common for my customers to have brought their own bags; often ones designed as reusable bags, but sometimes they bring ones designed to be single use and refill those.

Before this came up as an issue for organic growers, I had already gone off using bags that had been handed to me by customers. A few times of reaching in to a pile of these and hauling out something that's sticky and stinks to high heaven will do that to you; or, at least, it did it to me. Being able to blame my refusal to take these on the certification agency gives me a more polite way to refuse them.

I do take back containers such as cardboard berry tills that have my own stickers on them (though these are often not clean enough, in my opinion, to reuse; but they are recyclable here), and I do take clamshells if offered them, as I can wash them before reusing.

Some growers, and some markets, sell reusable bags at discount prices, to encourage customers to use those instead. These can generally be thrown in the wash.

-- Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 5 mostly
Fresh-market organic produce, small scale



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