Pat Kane: Are we ready for how radically back-to-the-future shopping will be?

On a trip back from the bourgie-market recently, after a fleeting but chastening visit to an Extinction Rebellion camp, I found myself in a moment of slow-motion realisation.

I think it was the “perfectly ripe something-something pears” that cracked me open. It wasn’t just the wittily branded cellophane containing these four rosy objects. But in particular, a beautifully moulded clear plastic insert, designed to protect all this “perfect ripeness” from any unsightly bruising.

As I dropped this cascade of plastic into the bin, it landed on a high, sparkling pile of previous wrappers of various other “healthy” foods.

Never mind the persistent rumours that most of this “recycling” actually isn’t

re-squished into new plastics by the local council. It’s bad enough that we barely trust those who are supposedly helping us to be good to the planet.

But this was something deeper – more like a puritan or ascetic reaction. When did we get so excessive? Why, when we’ve known for decades that our world – and particularly the poorer parts of the world – is piling up with trash, have we accepted this film of plastic over everything (particularly the most natural things)?

Convenience; more targeted and niche marketing; global supply-chains; the cosmopolitanising of tastes; the commoditizing of every corner of our lives… it’s not hard to start trotting out the answers. What’s interesting is who’s starting to provide them.

The boss of Unilever made a commitment this week to cut their usage of new plastics in half by 2025. They will soon start to sell reusable packs, create refill stations and deploy alternative materials in their containers.

Some consulting expert must be doing the rounds with a killer presentation, because behind Unilever there’s a queue of similarly penitent retailers (including Sainsbury’s and Tesco) with similar targets.

They all shufflingly admit that it’s the environmental militancy of their millennial and Gen Z consumers – read: potential boycotters – that’s forcing their hand.

The tidal wave of negative stories about plastic pollution – islands of it in the ocean, nanoparticles of it in our bodily systems, baby turtles killed from eating 100 pieces of it – has no doubt finally roused their marketing departments.

So an irresistible force (the “wokeness” of current 16 to 35-year-olds, around the absolute urgency of our response to climate crisis) seems to be meeting a moveable object (in the shape of capitalist enterprises, sensitive about their brand values).

Yet just scan the walls of bottled water in your local supermarket – each of them hundreds of times more carbon-toxic to produce than if you filled your own from a public tap – and the inertia of business-as-usual is right in front of you.

That all this might become another form of corporate “greenwashing” is also a strong possibility. For example, it sounds like good news that an “Alliance to End Plastic Waste” was launched early this year, with a $1 billion budget.

Probably worth watching, though, that some of its biggest signatories (Shell, ExxonMobil, Saudi Aramco and Sabic, among others) are actively investing scores of billions in oil-to-plastics facilities. They’re expanding, not contracting, their business here.

So how can aware citizens, raising their voices and casting their votes, ensure that there will be no commercial backsliding, when the media spotlight moves onto something else?

For that kind of civic and regulatory zeal, I usually turn to Scottish think-and-do tank Common Weal (disclosure: I’m on the advisory board). They are brewing up their Scottish version of a “Green New Deal”, which will land properly in the next few weeks.

With their customary optimism, they believe that a massive reduction in packaging is a “once-only” design job for these huge companies.

As soon as they get the idea, they’ll be constantly asking us to refill receptacles, lease hi-def TV screens, and not forget to take our fruit bags to the shops.

But how do they get the idea? The Common Wealers say there has to be a degree of compulsion. If the makers of plastic had to pay for all the external impacts that result from its production – the pollution in the seas and on land, the carbon emissions – then we’d see a lot less of it. So they propose not only an “Externality Tax”, to “make things reflect their real cost”, but also a “Producer Responsibility Law”. Under this, the producer is responsible for the entire lifecycle of the product, from raw material to broken commodity. This would compel manufacturers to pursue much better and more efficient design – never mind increasing the repairability of the product itself.

We should re-use, repair, even “remanufacture” (why can’t certain components – like a ball-bearing or a hinge – just last a very long time, and be redeployed in the next build?). But to recycle is “a mark of failure”, suggests Common Weal – meaning we haven’t thought in a “circular” enough way about the use of our resources.

Again, with their usual institutional ambition, Common Weal propose that we should create a “National Resources Agency” to harmonise standards (making all bottle screw-tops the same size, etc.).

They also point to new methods of processing wood and tree materials, which can shape them into objects via 3D printing. This can make items which are just as robust as plastic, but are much more readily biodegradable at the end of their cycle. Another new green manufacturing and business opportunity.

But what about that scene I opened with – my stupefied stare into a bin full of consumer whims, all these fruits delivered from toxically-far-off lands? Do we really expect these major corporations and retailers to unplug from their global supply chains, to reduce the diversity of their consumer offers? Is eco-lifestyle militancy, never mind the might of Scottish parliamentary law, enough of a force for change?

Common Weal advisor Ian Black suggested to me quite an interesting – and positive – role for the Unilevers of the world: something that might help them to do well by doing good.

“Imagine they became the owner of a network of local brands, made and distributed via short and simple supply circles (not linear supply chains)”, suggests Ian. “Centrally, Unilever would provide financial, marketing and production support and expertise to these enterprises.”

“So rather than them working to establish their global laundry brand dominance (for example) with two or three brands, they get there through hundreds of local, culturally aware brands, using locally available materials”.

Is that the kind of pragmatism that turns supertanker corporations round more quickly? Or do we actually need the suits to be scared rigid, by the prospect of appearing redundant, even toxic, to a post-consumerist generation? Both approaches required, I suspect.

I now have a section of my backpack stuffed with lifetime plastic bags, ready to display my reusable virtue at the local bourgie-market. Well, it’s a start.