Greta Matos

I buy a huge sack of oats and it lasts me twice a year. I store the oats in a large glass honey jar that I've cleaned and reused. When the bag that I've bought the oats in is empty, it's perfect to carry firewood and gather kindling because it's sturdy and lasts. If I bought my oats at the grocery store, I'd consume at least two cardboard boxes (heavily printed with toxic dyes and therefore not healthy to burn in the fire, only suitable for landfill) and two foil bags that couldn't be recycled or easily reused. In the six months that my sack of oats lasts, I've avoided throwing away 12 cereal boxes and 12 foil bags. It's incredible how unconscious and invisible the waste actually is when you start to add it up. I'm so glad I live near a mill where I can find good quality oats in bulk...and that our local beekeeper sells honey in such massive jars that are perfect for storage :)

For me it's easy to first make lifestyle changes that we personally have control over, such as simply deciding what not to buy anymore, and adopting a practice of bringing reusable containers whenever you guys shopping.
But the next step that we have to take as individuals is to engage with companies and encourage them to join us in our efforts by not putting anything on the shelves that is "disposable"- challenge your favorite companies to design (or fully redesign) all of their products with the end-of-life in mind. It's easy to contribute to disposable waste because of convenience, but it's up to consumers and legislation to make it inconvenient for companies to package products in a disposable way.

Personally this challenge is really easy for me because I already have a steady practice of always carrying reusable bags with me to the grocery store. Additionally- the town where I live (Pucón, Chile) has a plastic-bag-ban, so you actually cannot get plastic bags when checking out. 
That being said, even though there is a plastic-bag-ban in our town, the plastic bags used for produce are still everywhere and consistently used in all grocery stores. At the open air markets (call fruterias) there are plastic bags available. Everyone uses them because most produce must be weighed and a price sticker is printed and then put on the plastic bag. So the pricing system of produce ends up discouraging people from not using plastic bags and encourages their use instead (even though, again, there is a plastic bag ban in the town). In order for this to change in a meaningful way, all grocery stores need to change the way produce is priced to ensure that people don't need to put them in a plastic bag in order to print the sticker and scan the item. I get around this system simply by sticking the price sticker onto one piece of produce (for example one of my 4 avocados) and the price checker has the sticker that is needed to scan the item. I also have specific reusable bags I use for fresh produce which helps ensure the more delicate items don't end up crushed or squashed by other items. 

Although from a personal perspective plastic packaging on produce makes absolutely no sense to me, I can see how it might appeal to people who perceive packaging as a protective measure of ensuring food safety. Even if there is no actual evidence that plastic packaging makes fresh produce "safer" for the consumer, I can imagine that there is some segment of the consumer population that perceives it as such and are therefore more inclined to buy packaged produce. It also may influence the consumer perception of value, and that if a company wraps the produce in packaging than it is of higher premium quality (again, a false perception, but one that would easily be capitalized on from a marketing perspective) .
In terms of the last question about whom is being served by the plastic packaging, I personally feel as though everyone loses due to the negative impacts of such a practice; having said that, and knowing about a wide range of manufacturing practices and procedures, I can imagine that in most regards it is benefiting the retailer because it may extend shelf life. In reality I don't see a benefit to the consumer because it ends up being waste that the consumer is responsible for, and if the consumer wanted to extend the life of the produce they can simply package it in a reusable package once they get home. For the producer I see it primarily as added cost. If it is subsidized though, then the actual cost of it might not be taken into account and a producer may benefit from using it if it makes their pack-out processing facilities more efficient and mechanized (requiring less human labor and more machine-based touch points). Obviously plastic producers benefit as they now have access to a "new" market that previous generations did not capitalize on.