Scottish ministers have been accused of surrendering to the propaganda of the £11 billion packaging industry by forming a partnership that promotes food wrappings.
A Government website aimed at encouraging people to waste less food praises packaging – and is backed by The Packaging Federation. "Food loves the packaging it comes in," the website says. "There's nothing better to protect it and keep it fresher for longer. "
But Green MSP Alison Johnstone said: "Most waste information urges you to avoid over-packaging fresh food, not tell you how brilliant it is."
Food writer Joanna Blythman accused the packaging industry of using the Government's Zero Waste agency's Love Food Hate Waste website for "shameless self-promotion".
However, Zero Waste said the environmental impact of waste food was six times greater than that of packaging. "We are working to reduce both," it said.
Dick Searle, chief executive of The Packaging Federation, said: "Packaging protects food from the farm to the home, where it can carry on protecting it until it's eaten."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article