Which Supermarket?

RiffRaff

Anyone seen the film Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price?

I watched it last night at our local arts cinema and it really opened my eyes. The way that company is forcing out smaller businesses in America, paying its staff so little that they also have to rely on state benefits, keeping unions out of stores, etc. is shocking... obviously the film was more relevant to America than the UK but they also own Asda and there was a brief segment on one site in the UK.

It was really interesting but not a great film, if you see what I mean - would have been an excellent TV documentary. But I'd recommend it to anyone interested in big business - more info at https://www.walmartmovie.com .

Anyway, getting back to the point of the thread - I wouldn't shop at Asda any more!

tr3mor

rackstar wrote:

Returning to your comparisson on Lidl and Waitrose, I don't actually spend much more than you, but I get the option of free range, organic, British reared meat, or Fairtrade products, and the assurance that the products are sourced with ethics as a consideration, even if it is not the top priority. Also the staff are better paid, have share and training options. For people who think about our economy, society and environment and the constraints from globalisation, those are important things.

In principal I would agree, but I just cannot bring myself to spend £7 on 4 chicken breasts or £3 on a packet of bacon.

As for the fairtrade debacle, the less said the better. I will start buying fairtrade when they introduce fairtrade milk for british farmers.

Incidentally, what is your shopping bill each week? And what kind of meals etc do you make with that?

rackstar

I don't spend £3 on a packet of bacon. It's more like £4.50 for four packets (of British bacon - I hate buying that from abroad).

Our shopping bill varies each week, depending on how much we've got left from our veg box from Riverford. That is about £11 a week on fruit and veg for two of us. We eat quite a lot and enjoy our treats, and having people round for dinner too.

We then wander down to Waitrose once or twice a week. We don't have a freezer so we are kind of limited to fresh food and as my husband is allergic to dairy products we have to be quite fussy.

We normally spend about £8 - £15 a week at Waitrose - that covers meat, fish, juice, squash, pasta and rice etc, tinned tomatos etc, cereal, yoghurts, bread, crisps, soya milk, washing up liquid when we need it... I think you would spend a lot more at Waitrose if you relied on ready-made meals.

We manage so well partly because the best time for us to go to the supermarket is at 6pm - and that just happens to be when they tend to reduce the fresh stuff - breads, meat, fish etc. This means we get to eat really nice stuff that we wouldn't normally afford!

I get normal organic milk delivered from the milkman, but I only drink a pint a week so that's not expensive. We sometimes go the the health food shop to get egg replacement, or dried fruit etc.

We buy recycled toilet roll at Savers (£1.49 for 8 rolls) and chewy bars and occasional packets of Jordans cereals from Poundland.

For household stuff, we use Ecover which seems to last for ever, and microfiber ecocloths, which further reduce the amount of cleaning liquid you need. We use ecoballs in the washing machine (£35 for two years) with some extra Ecover bleach if the wash requires it.

As for toiletries, I just buy a years supply if somewhere like Boots is chucking away old stock at the end of a season. When it costs about a tenth of the original price you can afford to buy in bulk. Oh, and I have a mooncup.

So that's how we manage to shop at Waitrose rather than Aldi. We've learnt to enjoy cooking, be flexible with what we eat according to what's good value, use up left overs in soups etc, get into composting and recycling, and we rarely have to go to a huge supermarket. I can't be bothered with them at the moment. They seem to hectic and I would rather shop at a more relaxed pace and make it seem more like a leisure activity.

Oh, you asked what we eat... That really varies. Everything from roast dinners, to stir-fries, pasta and salads. We are learing to be more adventurous and rely more on seasonal produce.

It wouldn't work for everyone because some people are too short of time to shop around or cook properly, and if everyone shopped at Waitrose at 6pm they would soon learn to adjust their stock levels and opening times to avoid giving everything away half price or less at the end of the day.

My philosophy (although I don't always mange to live up to it) is to look at what you can afford and then adjust your habits to become more ethical, rather than your ethics to be more affordable.

For example, our income dropped by about 80 per cent so one example is I have cut down on fruit juices, stopped drinking fizzy drinks and rely more on water - and carry a bottle with me that I fill up from the tap. It's healthier too and we eat plenty of fruit anyway. I'd rather do that than rely on loads of cheap bottles of Coke from Asda. I'm now trying to get my husband to eat a lot less meat so we can get our shopping bill down to the golden £20 a week without changing where we shop.

How we'll manage if we have kids I don't know... any advice anyone?

hitchhiker_2

It's hard to make the perfect choice. I divide my shopping between Lidl, Tescos, Sainsbury's and local shops, depending what I need and what they have. I was also wondering about Lidl's ethical policy and for anyone interested, here's the ethiscore rating for the various supermarkets. There's a lot of negative publicity about Tescos because it's so visible and sometimes I feel guilty shopping there, but one day I had a chat with the lady at the till and she said she was very happy working there and staff are better treated than at the local Sainsburys. Clearly this is only anecdotal, but like a lot of issues, this is quite complex and there may be local variations.

I think what I try and do is make myself aware of the issues so I can make an informed choice, but also to acknowledge that making the perfect choice will be impossible. For example, I can only find recycled toilet paper at Lidl's and not anywhere else. There are of course counter arguments, that recycling may cost more energy, etc. but I generally avoid analysis paralysis and do what I can spread over the options that I have - local veg at the local shop, recycled loo paper from Lidl, fairtrade bananas from Tescos and local milk from local farmers. I also schedule my supermarket trips enroute to somewhere I have to be whenever I can to avoid extra trips. I have two large reuseable bags that I leave in the boot of my car so that I never forget to take them when I'm doing a shop.

I don't think doing nothing is an adequate substitute for not being able to do everything. We can only do what we can and hope the good word spreads and the choices we have one day will be more than simply between the lesser of evils.

Does anyone have any more info on the ethical practices (or lack thereof!) of Lidl?

sundin13

Can I just exercise my O.P. privilege and thank everyone who's posted their opinions and thoughts on this thread....it's been really interesting to follow, and I've learned so much!

Thank you everyone...and please don't stop

zappomatic

tr3mor wrote:

In principal I would agree, but I just cannot bring myself to spend £7 on 4 chicken breasts or £3 on a packet of bacon.

As for the fairtrade debacle, the less said the better. I will start buying fairtrade when they introduce fairtrade milk for british farmers.

Incidentally, what is your shopping bill each week? And what kind of meals etc do you make with that?

Waitrose is the closest you'll get to Fairtrade milk, at least from a supermarket. They pay the farmers more than anyone else per pint, and some of the milk even comes from their own farm in Hampshire. http://www.waitrose.com/food_drink/foodexpertise/dairyatwaitrose/selectfarmmilkandcream/index.asp (yes I know that's not going to be impartial!). Best thing is 4 pints costs £1, just like anywhere else.

starlite_2

Has anyone being following the rather 'tit for tat' press releases between tesco and asda?..

seems both are wising up to the new breed of ethical consumer, and are trying to curry favour..
most recently tesco announced it will move it's transporatation onto the railways..asda comes back saying..we did this three years ago and no one noticed, tesco are rehashing our great idea..

blahtety blah

and it goes on..

I hope they will go the same way as mcdonalds currently are and suffer a steady decline in sales...