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Comment by imacerealkiller | Hacker News Reader

On the topic of bulk grocery shops, it would be really great if more people shop there (I’m in Vienna and we have a few but they’re struggling) but realistically, i don’t think the general crowd is ready to make such a drastic lifestyle change.I would be happy enough if supermarkets at least try and encourage people to go for the packaging free option, or provide incentives in this regard. It’s ridiculous and nonsensical that they charge more for you to buy your groceries loose aka without packaging. It’s like they’re punishing you for not going for the packet of 6 Granny Smith apples all wrapped in plastic and cardboard.

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>It’s like they’re punishing you for not going for the packet of 6 Granny Smith apples all wrapped in plastic and cardboard.

I've always run on the gut assumption that they must be putting the worst apples that still look appealing into those packages.

The packaging has a barcode so it can be scanned faster at a checkout. Faster scanning means less checkouts and staff which means lower capital and operating costs.

In central Europe we weight our Vegs and fruits ourselfs and apply a bar code to whatever bag in the majority of super markets.

I sometimes collect these codes on my hand and just put all the Vegs in a cloth bag.

Same! Or if I have to use one of their bags I put all the fruit and veg in the same bag and all the tags on it. Realistically it’s even less work for the cashier to scan everything all at once on one bag rather than pick up multiple packages and scanning them individually, so they have no excuse, really!

At most stores each individual piece of produce has a scannable sticker on it.

Hahaha I'm sure somewhere out there, someone's opened a packaging and turned the apple around to find it all brown and disgusting on the other concealed side!

At least for fruits an vegetables most things at Billa and Spar are individual items you have to pick yourself and they strongly discourage those plastic bags. That's, unfortunately, not the case for literally every other item in their stores tho

I could care less about bulk supermarkets, and I don’t really think they’re a great answer. If anything, they may be worse in some ways.

For me, it’s the packaging. Japan is a great example of this.

Think of a banana, or an orange. Perfect package right? Now wrap them in plastic. Then when you buy them, they’re placed in a plastic bag. Sometimes each individual banana is wrapped individually... with plastic.

That’s Japan. That’s a lot of Asian countries, in fact.

> It’s ridiculous and nonsensical that they charge more for you to buy your groceries loose

It probably costs them more. Charge less than your costs and you go bust.

Yeah but it’s annoying because I know there are people who would literally buy the package of 6 apples just cos it’s on a special promo. If it’s almost equivalent to the price of 2/3 apples, why not, right? And then they end up binning the rest that they can’t eat. So much food waste it’s crazy. They need to be more conscious in their decisions.

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