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The way I understand it, without the wrapping a much larger percentage of cucumbers need to be thrown away before ever being sold, due to spoilage. That's not a win for the environment.

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> That's not a win for the environment.

How is this calculated? I know that growing a cucumber has an environmental cost but so does producing plastic, delivering it and then using machines to shrink-wrap every cucumber.

This study, for instance, [1] looks at CO2 emissions. Which may be a somewhat limited view, but the effect is rather large: adding 5 wrappers around a cucumber (4 of which being useless) would result in about the same CO2 usage as adding no wrapper. And that's not even considering spoilage after the cucumber has been bought by a consumer.

[1] https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sustainable-food-system...

CO2 usage, I get you, but what about the plastic waste?

This is the problem though, right? It’s not one league table of environmental goodness - there are tradeoffs that as an educated consumer are impose to navigate.

Yes, I understand, that's why I questioned the unqualified claim "that's not a win for the environment" as if it's so clear cut.

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