Trader Joe's Fruit and Vegetable Packaging: I've got a bone to pick!

I love Trader Joe's.   I love their cereals, I love their cheeses, I love the shampoo, I love their friendly cashiers, and I love their prices.  But one thing I don't like is their produce.  With the exception of bananas, I try to avoid buying produce there.  Their prices aren't great when it comes to produce, and I find that their quality is hit or miss.  Don't even get me started on the disappointing strawberries I recently purchased and ultimately fed to Karl, our pet iguana.

But the worst part is the over packaging.  You want to buy pears?  Well, your only choice is to buy a pack of four.  And they're shrink-wrapped.  And they're sitting on a little Styrofoam plate.  And one of them looks bruised.

Mother Jones recently addressed this on their website, saying that a rep for TJ's says that this ensures safer transportation, sufficient stacking, and it saves customers money by not having to install scales at their checkout counter.

That's nice that they want to save the customers money, but I still can find cheaper produce  that's of higher quality at my local produce markets and farmer's markets, too.

On a blog called Surely You Nest, the blogger contacted Trader Joe's to issue a complaint about their packaging.  Their response included this: "We continue to explore economical Earth friendly alternatives that can deliver freshness and shelf life without preservatives. We also seek out recycled paper packaging where possible and some of our packaging for produce is made of corn oil, so it is compostable."

I'm not impressed with that response, personally.  I still don't understand why they are the only supermarket around that only offers produce in a prepackaged environmentally-unfriendly fashion.   I'll still shop at Trader Joe's to get their version of Cheerios and their brand of yogurt, but you can find me getting local fruits and vegetables elsewhere.

Are you as annoyed as I am about their wasteful packaging?  File a complaint!