In this day and age, with recycling, re-purposing and waste reduction so crucially important, I’d expect big supermarket brands to minimise the amount of packaging they use. But a packet of Tesco Finest smoked salmon contains a shocking amount of pointless packaging, so much of the damned stuff that I found myself wondering just how ‘fine’ the product really is.
Are we talking Emperor’s New Clothes? Is it really just ordinary smoked salmon in a fancy guise?
Tesco Finest packaging – A pack of smoked salmon consists of:
- A thick card outer sleeve printed in full colour, with multiple folds, glue and a tear-open perforated top
- A thick plastic sleeve of such good quality it requires scissors to open
- A sheet of quality cardboard printed shiny gold on one side and shiny silver on the other
- A tough plastic sheet in between each slice of fish, each printed with a symbol showing me how to peel it away from the fish
Am I so useless that I can’t open a packet of smoked fish without having a nervous breakdown or a panic attack? Am I so stupid that Tesco thinks I’ll be fooled into thinking posh packaging contains better food? Do I really need a special printed symbol to tell me how to separate individual slices of fish? How much of the product’s price is hoovered up by all that packaging? And how on earth does Tesco justify this extraordinary excess?
My salmon tasted gorgeous. No problems there. But I won’t be buying anything from Tesco’s ‘finest’ range again when ‘fine’ appears to means eye-wateringly complicated (and frankly anachronistic) packaging…
What’s your excuse for all this profligacy, Tesco?
