>However, it is usually organic food and it is typically much more expensive than regular, packaged food. I don't want organic. I just want to avoid packaging

Just avoiding packaging is more expensive, because as this excellent article points out[1], packaging represents the automation of the distribution chain.

> Some of the first packaging arose in the late 19th century. Some of the earliest packaging was for Uneeda Biscuits. They were packaged in a box with wax paper that sealed in the biscuits so they wouldn't go stale. Packaging was all about easing distribution for producers, because before that, everything was sold in bulk containers. The transformation of production and distribution as well as retail sales—going from mom and pop stores to the chain supermarkets we have today—means that packaging represents the automation of the distribution system. I think producers are very conscious of how helpful packaging is in helping them centralize their businesses. In doing that, they get to downsize and streamline and create economies of scale that they couldn't create if they didn't get to consolidate—which is what a lot of the drive behind switching from the refillable to the disposable bottle and can was about. The beer and soda industries consolidated massively in the post-war period, and the number of producers shrank dramatically. And this massive consolidation in both of those industries was facilitated by the switch to disposable containers. The industry no longer has the necessity for regional bottling plants where trucks can only go so far to deliver the products because then they have to go retrieve the empties. Now they can just drive straight through, one way, and they don't have to take anything back. They can go to the next central hub, pick up more stuff, keep driving and drop it off.

In the same way that containerization resulted in massive automation of ports and shipping (thousands of dock-workers vs. a few crane/truck operators), disposable packaging has automated terrestrial distribution channels. This has resulted in massive cost reductions, leading to large scale and consolidation ("let's ship from a single factory to the whole world" vs. "let's ship from a thousand local producers located within 100 miles of the end-consumer").

Packaging is really about automation, which is really about supply-chain lengthening, which is really about maximally concentrating profit.

>green can be cheap

Couldn't agree more. Low-tech is best tech. The permaculture folks realized this years ago.

The shortest/greenest supply chain is having your "grocery aisle" growing in the front yard (designed for zero-inputs[2] and near-zero-labor). Perhaps the ultimate solution isn't "Super Recycling" ie automated plastic sorting (still needed for other plastics btw) but "Super Reducing" -- an inexpensive easy-to-setup food garden that makes the entire supply chain (or most of it) obsolute. It needs to be something that people in suburbs can A) actually use and B) get past their HOA/neighborhood association.

The idiot-proof recycling bin is great, but we also need the idiot-proof organic garden.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20050401192355/http://www.altern... (I know I keep hammering this article, but the author nailed all these issues way back in 2005)

[2] Yes, zero-input gardening is possible even though you're removing material. Soil organisms continuously break down rock for minerals, and plants fix nitrogen and carbon from the atmosphere. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2H60ritjag