London (AFP)

"Naked" vegetables, loose starchy foods for customers with their own containers: in front of more and more environmentally conscious consumers, British supermarkets compete to reduce plastic packaging on their shelves, accused of polluting the planet.

"Today, I did my first shopping without plastic!", Rejoices May Stirling, a 49-year-old mother, who came "specially" from Ramsbury, 60 km away, for the big "unpacking" organized during the summer. been in one of Waitrose's chain stores in Oxford (central England).

Here, 160 kinds of fruits and vegetables have been stripped of their plastic packaging and a bulk space for starchy foods, cereals, wine and beer has been installed.

- "Liberator" -

Shopping without plastic, "it's so liberating, it means we can work a little for the environment," smiles May Stirling, the shopping cart full, while admitting to have been a little peeved to find only two kinds of cereals in the bulk space.

Many customers are ready to play the game and some even claim more: reuse bottles of milk, shampoo ... In the store, several hundred notes of suggestions are displayed on a dedicated wall.

Waitrose, which had launched this trial for 11 weeks, decided to extend it and introduce it in three other stores of this chain which counts more than 300.

But to be sustainable, the formula must be "commercially viable," said a spokesman for the brand, James Armstrong.

While plastic packaging is one of the least expensive, are customers willing to pay more for a greener packaging system?

Fran Scott, coming with his tupperwares, hesitates. "I'd like to think so, but honestly I do not know," admits the 55-year-old marketing consultant.

Other giants in the sector are positioning themselves. Signatories of the "UK Plastic Pact" urging them to only use reusable, recyclable or biodegradable packaging by 2025, Tesco and Asda have recently announced that they will stop using plastic bags for their purchases online; Morrisons has promised plastic-free areas for fruits and vegetables in 60 stores in 2019.

- "Lobby" -

A precursor, one of the London stores of the Budgens franchise prides itself on having reorganized its logistics in ten weeks last November to eliminate the plastic packaging of 1,800 of its 14,000 products.

"We did this to show other big supermarkets that it was not as difficult as they say," says AFP director Andrew Thornton.

The plastic does not disappear, however. For example, the cheese is still delivered with. But after slicing it, employees are now using sugarcane-based cellulose film to repack it.

A few meters from the cheese stand, Richard Brady, 44, buys a box of sushi. "I have plastic in my hands," he laughs, embarrassed. "It's like that, and my wife is hungry, it's up to supermarkets to decide, not us, right?"

"We are buying products still wrapped in plastic because we have not yet persuaded (all of our suppliers) to change" method, says Andrew Thornton, who calls the "biggest companies (...) to put pressure on the big suppliers. "

For Mark Miodownik, professor of materials at UCL University, "we would have to change the whole functioning of the system". Plastic is a "great material", especially for hospital equipment, pipes, etc. It is also a welcome package if it can be properly recycled.

But plastic became problematic in the 1960s when marketing made it a "symbol of modernity," says Miodownik, embodying a "practical" lifestyle in an economy where the merits of disposable, diapers with paper towels.

"The bottles of water are a kind of madness (...), it became a routine to sell, as if it was the only way to drink the + true + water ...", illustrates the expert.

- Food waste ? -

Alternatives exist depending on the food: paper, cardboard, glass jars ... But "plastic has benefits, such as its impermeability to air and mold, which can extend the life of products", notes the Food Standards Agency (FSA).

"We can not let the solution of this problem at the will of well-intentioned supermarkets," shouts Sam Chetan Welsh, consultant at Greenpeace, who calls "the government to set legal limits to the amount of plastic manufactured and used."

For Barry Turner, director of Plastics and Flexible Packaging Group, which represents plastic packaging manufacturers, the solution lies in "improving recycling infrastructure".

By reducing plastic packaging too much, supermarkets could face "unintended consequences", such as "food waste," he says.

Yet at Budgens Belsize Park, no waste, according to its director who perseveres: the store had more than 2,300 products without plastic this summer.

© 2019 AFP